Football Days Part 41

Richard Harding Davis]

His interest in football had been a keen one. He was one of the leaders at Lehigh, who first organized that University's football team. He was a truly remarkable player. What he did in football is well known to men of his day. He loved the game; he wrote about the game; he did much to help the game.

CHAPTER XXIII

ALOHA

"Hail and Farewell," crowded by the Hawaiians into one pregnant word!

Would that this message might mean as much in as little compa.s.s. I can promise only brevity and all that brevity means in so vast a matter as football to a man who would love nothing better than to talk on forever.

We know that football has really progressed and improved, and that the boys of to-day are putting football on a higher plane than it has ever been on before. We are a progressive, sporting public.

Gone are the old Fifth Avenue horse buses, that used to carry the men to the field of battle; gone, too, are the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the Hoffman House, with their recollections of great victories fittingly celebrated. The old water bucket and sponge, with which Trainer Jim Robinson used to rush upon the field to freshen up a tired player, are now things of the past. To-day we have the spectacle of Pooch Donovan giving the Harvard players water from individual sanitary drinking cups!

The old block game is no more. Heavy ma.s.s play has been opened up.

To-day there is something for the public to _see_; something interesting to watch at every point; something significant in every move. As a result, greatly increased mult.i.tudes witness the game. No longer do football enthusiasts stand behind ropes on the side lines. The popularity of the game has made it necessary to build huge _stadia_ for the sport, to take the place of the old wooden stands.

College games, for the most part, nowadays are played on college grounds. Accordingly the sport has been withdrawn from the miscellaneous mult.i.tude and confined to the field where it really belongs and the spirit of the game is now just what it should be--exclusively collegiate.

Best of all, the modern style of play has made the game more than ever a heroic see-saw, with one side uppermost for a time only to jar the very ground with the shock of its fall.

Yet, victorious or defeated, the spirit through it all is one of splendid and overflowing college enthusiasm. While there is abounding joy in an unforeseen or hard won victory there is also much that is inspirational in the st.u.r.dy, courageous, devoted support of college-mates in the hour of defeat.

Isaac H. Bromley, Yale '53, once summed up eloquently the spirit of college life and sport in the following words:

"These contests and these triumphs are not all there is of college life, but they are a not unimportant part of it. The best education, the most useful training, come not from the cla.s.sroom and from books, but from the attrition of mind on mind, from the wholesome emulation engendered by a common aim and purpose, from the whetting of wits by good-natured rivalry, the inspiration of youthful enthusiasms, the blending together of all of us in undying love for our common Mother.

"As to the future: We may not expect this unbroken round of victories to go on forever; we shall need sometimes, more than the inspiration of victory, the discipline of defeat. And it will come some day. Our champions will not last forever. Some time Stagg must make his last home run, and Camp his final touchdown. Some day Bob Cook will 'hear the dip of the golden oars' and 'pa.s.s from sight with the boatman pale.'

"It would be too much to think that all their successors will equally succeed. It might be monotonous. But of one thing we may be a.s.sured--that whatever happens, we shall never fail to extend the meed of praise to the victors. We shall be hereafter, as in the past we have always been, as stout in adversity as we have been merry in suns.h.i.+ne."

"Then strip, lads, and to it Though sharp be the weather; And if, by mischance you should happen to fall There are worse things in life Than a tumble on heather And life is itself, but a game, of football."