ootball.

"One of our best games, as a rule, was with Johns Hopkins University.
Paul Dashiell, then a Hopkins man, usually managed to smuggle one or
more Poes to Annapolis with his team. We knew it, but at that time we
did not object because we usually beat the Hopkins team.

"Another interesting match was with the Deaf Mutes from Kendall College.
It was a standing joke with us that they too frequently smuggled good
football players who were not mutes. These kept silent during the game
and talked with their hands, but frequently when I tackled one hard and
fell on him, I could hear him cuss under his breath."

M. M. Taylor brings us down to Navy football of the early nineties.

"In my day the principal quality sought was beef. Being embryo sailors
we had to have nautical terms for our signals, and they made our
opponents sit up and take notice. When I played halfback I remember my
signals were my order relating to the foremast. For instance,
'Fore-top-gallant clew lines and hands-by-the-halyards' meant that I was
the victim. On the conclusion of the order, if the captain could not
launch a play made at once, he had to lengthen his signal, and sometimes
there would be a string of jargon, intelligible only to a sailor, which
would take the light yard men aloft, furl the sail, and probably cast
reflections on the stowage of the bunt. Anything connected with the
anchor was a kick. The mainmast was consecrated to the left half, and
the mizzen to the fullback.

"In one game our lack of proper uniform worked to our advantage. I was
on the sick list and had turned my suit over to a substitute. I braved
the doctor's disapproval and went into the game in a pair of long
working trousers and a blue flannel shirt. The opposing team,
Pennsylvania, hailed me as 'Little Boy Blue,' and paid no further
attention to me, so that by good fortune I made a couple of scores. Then
they fell upon me, and at the close all I had left was the pants."

J. W. Powell, captain of the '97 team, tells of the interim between
Army-Navy games.

"Our head coach was Johnny Poe," he says, "and he and Paul Dashiell took
charge of the squad. Some of our good men were Rus White, Bill Tardy,
Halligan and Fisher, holding over from the year before. A. T. Graham and
Jerry Landis in the line. A wild Irishman in the plebe class, Paddy
Shea, earned one end position in short order, while A. H. McCarthy went
in at the other wing. Jack Asserson, Bobby Henderson, Lou