HEROES OF THE PAST
THE EARLY DAYS

We treasure the memory of the good men who have gone before. This is true of the world's history, a nation's history, that of a state, and of a great university. Most true is it of the memory of men of heroic mold. As schoolboys, our imaginations were fired by the records of the brilliant achievements of a Perry, a Decatur or a Paul Jones; and, as we grow older, we look back to those heroes of our boyhood days, and our hearts beat fast again as we recall their daring deeds and pay them tribute anew for the stout hearts, the splendid fighting stamina, and the unswerving integrity that made them great men in history.

In every college and university there is a hall of fame, where the heroes of the past are idolized by the younger generations. Trophies, portraits, old flags and banners hang there. Threadbare though they may be, they are rich in memories. These are, however, only the material things—"the trappings and the suits" of fame—but in the hearts of university men the memory of the heroes of the past is firmly and reverently enshrined. Their achievements are a distinguished part of the university's history—a part of our lives as university men—and we are ever ready now to burn incense in their honor, as we were in the old days to burn bonfires, in celebration of their deeds.

It is well now that we recall some of the men who have stood in the front line of football; in the making and preservation of the great game. Many of them have not lived to see the results of their service to the sport which they deemed to be manly and worth while. It is, however, because they stood there during days, often full of stress and severe criticism of the game, staunch and resistless, that football occupies its present high plane in the athletic world.

It may be that some of their names are not now associated with football. Some of them are captains of industry. They are in the forefront of public affairs. Some of them are engaged in the world's work in far-away lands. But the spirit that these men apply to their life work is the same spirit that stirred them on the gridiron. Their football training has made them better able to fight the battle of life.

Men who gave signals, are now directing large industries. Players who carried the ball, are now carrying trade to the ends of the world. Men who bucked the line, are forging their way sturdily to the front. Men who were tackles, are still meeting their opponents with the same intrepid zeal. The men who played at end in those days, are to-day seeing that nothing gets around them in the business world. The public is the referee and umpire. It knows their achievements in the greater game of life.

It is not my purpose to select an all-star football team from the long list of heroes past and present. It is not possible to select any one man whom we can all crown as king. We all have our football idols, our own heroes, men after whom we have patterned, who were our inspiration.

We can never line up in actual scrimmage the heroes of the past with those of more recent years. What a treat if this could be arranged!

There are many men I have idolized in football, not only for their record as players, but for the loyalty and spirit for the game which they have inspired.

Walter Camp

When I asked Walter Camp to write the introduction to this book, I told him that as he had written about football players for twenty years it was up to some one to relate some of his achievements as a football player. We all know Walter Camp as a successful business man and as a football genius whose strategy has meant much to Yale. His untiring efforts, his contributions to the promotion of the best interests of the game, stand as a brilliant record in the history of football. To give him his just due would require a special volume. The football world knows Walter Camp as a thoroughbred, a man who has played the game fairly, and sees to it that the game is being played fairly to-day.

We have read his books, enjoyed his football stories, and kept in touch with the game through his newspaper articles. He is the loyal, ever-present critic on the side lines and the helpful adviser in every emergency. He has helped to safeguard the good name of football and kept pace with the game until to-day he is known as the "Father of football."

Let us go back into football history where, in the recollections of others, we shall see Freshman Camp make the team, score touchdowns, kick goals and captain Yale teams to victory.

F.R. Vernon, who was a freshman at Yale when Camp was a sophomore, draws a vivid word picture of Camp in his active football days. Vernon played on the Yale team with Camp.

"Walter Camp in his football playing days," says Vernon, "was built physically on field running lines; quick on his legs and with his arms. His action was easy all over and seemed to be in thorough control from a well-balanced head, from which looked a pair of exceptionally keen, piercing, expressive brown eyes.

"Camp was always alert, and seemed to sense developments before they occurred. One of my chief recollections of Camp's play was his great confidence with the ball. In his room, on the campus, in the gym', wherever he was, if possible, he would have a football with him. He seemed to know every inch of its surface, and it seemed almost as if the ball knew him. It would stick to his palm, like iron to a magnet.

"In one of his plays, Camp would run down the side of the field, the ball held far out with one arm, while the other arm was performing yeoman service in warding off the oncoming tacklers. Frequently he would pass the ball from one hand to the other, while still running, depending upon which arm he saw he would need for defense. Smilingly and confidently, Camp would run the gauntlet of opposing players for many consecutive gains. I do not recall one instance in which he lost the ball through these tactics.

"It was a pretty game to play and a pretty game to look at. Would that the rules could be so worded as to make the football of Camp's time the football of to-day!

"Walter Camp's natural ability as a football player was recognized as soon as he entered Yale in 1876. He made the 'varsity at once and played halfback. It was in the first Harvard football game at Hamilton Park that the Harvard captain, who was a huge man with a full, bushy beard, saw Walter Camp, then a stripling freshman in uniform, and remarked to the Yale Captain:

"'You don't mean to let that child play; he is too light; he will get hurt.'

"Walter made a mental note of that remark, and during the game the Harvard captain had occasion to remember it also, when in one of the plays Camp tackled him, and the two went to the ground with a heavy thud. As the Harvard captain gradually came to, he remarked to one of his team mates:

"'Well, that little fellow nearly put me out!'

"Camp's brilliant playing earned him the captaincy of the team in 1878 and 1879. He had full command of his men and was extremely popular with them, but this did not prevent his being a stickler for discipline.

"In my day on the Yale team with Camp," Vernon states, "Princeton was our dire opponent. For a week or so before a Princeton game, we all agreed to stay on the campus and to be in bed every night by eleven o'clock. Johnny Moorhead, who was one of our best runners, decided one night to go to the theatre, however, and was caught by Captain Camp, whereupon we were all summoned out of bed to Camp's room, shortly before midnight. After the roundup we learned the reason for our unexpected meeting. There was some discussion in which Camp took very little part. No one expected that Johnny would receive more than a severe reprimand and this feeling was due largely to the fact that we needed him in the game. Imagine our surprise, therefore, when Camp, who had left us for a moment, returned to the room and handed in his resignation as captain of the team. We revolted at this. Johnny, who sized up the situation, rather than have the team lose Camp, decided to quit the team himself. What occurred the next day between Camp and Johnny Moorhead we never knew, but Johnny played in the game and squared himself."

Walter Camp's name is coupled with that of Chummy Eaton in football history. "Eaton was on the left end rush line," says Vernon, "and played a great game with Camp down the side line. When one was nearly caught for a down, the other would receive the ball from him on an over-head throw and proceed with the run. Camp and Eaton would repeat this play, sending the ball back and forth down the side of the field for great gains.

"In one of the big games in the fall of 1879, Eaton had a large muscle in one of his legs torn and had to quit playing for that season." Vernon was put in Chummy's place. "But I couldn't fill Chummy's shoes," Vernon acknowledges, "for he and Camp had practiced their beautiful side line play all the fall.

"The next year Chummy's parents wouldn't let him play, but Chummy was game—he simply couldn't resist—it was a case of Love Before Duty with him. He played on the Yale team the next fall, however, but not as Eaton, and every one who followed football was wondering who that star player 'Adams' was and where he came from. But those on the inside knew it was Chummy.

"Frederic Remington," says Vernon, "was a member of our team. We were close friends and spent many Sunday afternoons on long walks. I can see him now with his India ink pencil sketching as we went along, and I must laugh now at the nerve I had to joke him about his efforts.

"Remy was a good football player and one of the best boxers in college. Dear Old Remy is gone, but he left his mark."

Other men, equally prominent old Yale men tell me, who were on the team that year were Hull, Jack Harding, Ben Lamb, Bob Watson, Pete Peters and many others.

Walter Camp, as Yale gridiron stories go, was not only captain of his team, but in reality also its coach. Perhaps he can be called the pioneer coach of Yale football. It is most interesting to listen to old time Yale players relate incidents of the days when they played under Walter Camp as their captain: how they came to his room by invitation at night, sat on the floor with their backs to the wall, with nothing in the center of the room but a regulation football. There they got together, talked things over, made suggestions and comparisons. And it is said of Camp that he would do more listening by far than talking. This was characteristic, for although he knew so much of the game he was willing to get every point of view and profit by every suggestion.

In 1880 Camp relinquished the captaincy to R.W. Watson. Yale again defeated Harvard, Camp kicking a goal from placement. Following this R. W. Watson ran through the entire Harvard team for a touchdown.

Harvard men were greatly pained when Walter Camp played again in 1881. He should have graduated in 1880. This game was also won by Yale, thus making the fourth victorious Yale team that Camp played on. This record has never been equalled. Camp played six years at Yale.

John Harding was another of the famous old Yale stars who played on Walter Camp's team.

"It is now more than thirty-five years since my days on the football gridiron," writes Harding. "What little elementary training I got in football, I attribute to the old game of 'theory,' which for two years on spring and summer evenings, after supper, we used to play at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., on the athletic grounds near the Middle School. One fellow would be 'it' as we dashed from one side of the grounds to the other and when one was trapped he joined the 'its,' until everybody was caught. I learned there how to dodge, as well as the rudiments of the necessary football accomplishment of how to fall down without getting hurt. As a result of this experience, with my chum, W. A. Peters, when we got down to Yale in the fall of '76, we offered ourselves as willing victims for the University football team, and with the result that we both 'made' the freshman team, and had our first experience in a match game of football against the Harvard freshman at Boston. I don't remember who won that contest, but I do remember the University eleven, under Eugene Baker's careful training, beating Harvard that fall at New Haven and my football enthusiasm being fired up to a desire to make the team, if it were possible.

"Of course, Walter Camp has for many years, and deservedly so, been regarded as the father of football at Yale, but in my day, and at least until Baker left college, he was only an ordinary mortal and a good halfback. Baker was the unquestioned star and I cannot disabuse my mind that he was the original football man of Yale, and at least entitled to the title of 'grandfather' of the game there and it was from him that my tuition mainly came.

"My impression is that Baker was always for the open running and passing game and that mass playing and flying wedges and the various refinements of the game that depended largely on 'beef' were of a later day.

"For four years I played in the rush line with Walter Camp as a halfback, and for two years, at least, with Hull and Ben Lamb on either side of me, all of us somehow understanding each other's game and all being ready and willing to help each other out. Whatever ability and dexterity I may have developed seemed to show itself at its best when playing with them and to prove that good team work and 'knowing your man' wins.

"I got to know Walter Camp's methods and ways of playing, so that, somehow or other, I could judge pretty well where the ball was going to drop when he kicked and could navigate myself about so that I was, more often than any one else on our side, near the ball when it dropped to the ground, and, if perchance, it happened to be muffed by an opposing player, which put me 'on side,' the chances of a touchdown, if I got the ball, were excellent, and Hull and Lamb were somehow on hand to back me up and were ready to follow me in any direction.

"During my last two years of football the 'rushers' were unanimously of the opinion that the kicking, dodging and passing open game was the game we should strive for and that it was the duty of the halfback and backs to end their runs with a good long punt, wherever possible, and give us a chance to get under the ball when it came down, while the rest of the team behind the line were in favor of a running mass play game, particularly in wet and slippery weather.

"I remember once in my senior year our divergence of views on this question, about three weeks before the final game, nearly split our team, and that as a result I nearly received the doubtful honor of becoming the captain of a defeated Yale team. Camp, fearful of wet weather and possible snow at the Thanksgiving game, and with Channing, Eaton and Fred Remington as the heavy Yale ends and everybody 'big' in the rush line excepting myself, was trying to develop us with as little kicking as possible, and was sensitive because of the protests from the rush line that there was no kicking. We were all summoned one evening to his room in Durfee; the situation explained, together with his unwillingness to assume the responsibility of captain unless his ideas were followed; his fear of defeat, if they were not followed, his willingness to continue on the team as a halfback and to do his best and his resignation as captain with the suggestion of my taking the responsibility of the position. Things looked blue for Yale when Walter walked out of the door, but after some ten minutes' discussion we decided that the open game was the better, despite Camp's opinion to the contrary, but that we could not play the open game without Camp as captain. Some one was sent out to bring Walter back; matters were smoothed out; we played the open game and never lost a touchdown during the season. But during the four years I was on the Yale varsity we never lost but one touchdown, from which a goal was kicked and there were no goals kicked from the field. This goal was lost to Princeton, and I think was in the fall of '78, the year that Princeton won the championship. The two men that were more than anybody else responsible for the record were Eugene Baker and Walter Camp, but behind it all was the old Yale spirit, which seems to show itself better on the football field than in any other branch of athletics."

Theodore M. McNair

On December 19th, 1915, there appeared in the newspapers a notice of the death of an old Princeton athlete, in Japan—Theodore M. McNair—who, while unknown to the younger football enthusiasts, was considered a famous player in his day. To those who saw him play the news brought back many thrills of his adventures upon the football field. The following is what an old fellow player has to say about his team mate:

"Princeton has lost one of her most remarkable old time athletes in the death of Theodore M. McNair of the class of 1879.

"McNair was a classmate of Woodrow Wilson. After his graduation he became a Presbyterian missionary, a professor in a Tokio college and the head of the Committee that introduced the Christian hymnal into Japan.

"To old Princeton graduates, however, McNair is known best as a great football player who was halfback on the varsity three years and was regarded as a phenomenal dodger, runner and kicker. In the three years of his varsity experience McNair went down to defeat only once, the first game in which he appeared as a regular player. The contest was with Harvard and was played between seasons—April 28th, 1877—at Cambridge. Harvard won the game by 2 touchdowns to 1 for the Tigers. McNair made the touchdown for his team. This match is interesting in that it marked the first appearance of the canvas jacket on the football field. Smock, one of the Princeton halfbacks, designed such a jacket for himself and thereafter for many seasons football players of the leading Eastern colleges adopted the garment because it made tackling more difficult under the conditions of those days. McNair was of large frame and fleet of foot. He was especially clever in handling and passing the ball, which in those days was more of an art than at present. It was not unusual for the ball to be passed from player to player after a scrimmage until a touchdown or a field goal was made.

"Walter Camp was one of McNair's Yale adversaries. They had many punting duels in the big games at St. George's Cricket Grounds, Hoboken, but Camp never had the satisfaction of sending McNair off the field with a beaten team."

Alexander Moffat

Every football enthusiast who saw Alex Moffat play had the highest respect for his ability in the game. Alex Moffat was typically Princetonian. His interest in the game was great, and he was always ready to give as much time as was needed to the coaching of the Princeton teams. His hard, efficient work developed remarkable kickers. He loved the game and was a cheerful, encouraging and sympathetic coach. From a man of his day I have learned something about his playing, and together we can read of this great all-round athlete.

Alex Moffat was so small when he was a boy that he was called "Teeny-bits." He was still small in bone and bulk when he entered Princeton. Alex had always been active in sport as a boy. Small as he was, he played a good game of baseball and tennis and he distinguished himself by his kicking in football before he was twelve years of age. The game was then called Association Football, and kicking formed a large part of it. At an early age, he became proficient in kicking with right or left foot. When he was fifteen he created a sensation over at the Old Seminary by kicking the black rubber Association football clear over Brown Hall. That was kick enough for a boy of fifteen with an old black, rubber football. If anybody doubts it, let him try to do the trick.

The Varsity team of Princeton in the fall of '79 was captained by Bland Ballard of the class of '80. He had a bunch of giants back of him. There were fifteen on the team in those days, and among them were such men as Devereaux, Brotherlin, Bryan, Irv. Withington, and the mighty McNair. The scrub team player at that time was pretty nearly any chap that was willing to take his life in his hands by going down to the field and letting those ruthless giants step on his face and generally muss up his physical architecture.

When Alex announced one day that he was going to take a chance on the scrub team, his friends were inclined to say tenderly and regretfully, "Good night, sweet prince." But Alex knew he was there with the kick, whether it came on the left or right, and he made up his mind to have a go with the canvas-backed Titans of the Varsity team. One fond friend watching Alex go out on the field drew a sort of consolation from the observation that "perhaps Alex was so small the Varsity men wouldn't notice him." But Alex soon showed them that he was there. He got in a punt that made Bland Ballard gasp. The big captain looked first at the ball, way up in the air, then looked at Alex and he seemed to say as the Scotsman said when he compared the small hen and the huge egg, "I hae me doots. It canna be."

After that the Varsity men took notice of Alex. When the ball was passed back to him next the regulars got through the scrub line so fast that Alex had to try for a run. Bland Ballard caught him up in his arms, and finding him so light and small, spared himself the trouble of throwing him down. Ballard simply sank down on the ground with Alex in his arms and began rolling over and over with him towards the scrub goal. Alex cried "Down! Down!" in a shrill, treble voice that brought an exclamation from the side line. "It's a shame to do it. Bland Ballard is robbing the cradle."

Such was Alex Moffat in the fall of '79, still something of the "Teeny-bits" that he was in early boyhood. In two years Alex's name was on the lips of every gridiron man in the country, and in his senior year, as captain, he performed an exploit in goal kicking that has never been equalled.

In the game with Harvard in the fall of '83, he kicked five goals, four being drop kicks and one from a touchdown. His drop kicks were all of them long and two of them were made with the left foot. Alex grew in stature and in stamina and when he was captain he was regarded as one of the most brilliant fullbacks that the game had ever known. He never was a heavy man, but he was swift and slippery in running, a deadly tackler, and a kicker that had not his equal in his time.

Alex remained prominent in football activity until his death in 1914. He served in many capacities, as member of committees, as coach, as referee and as umpire. He was a man of happy and sunny nature who made many friends. He loved life and made life joyous for those who were with him. He was idolized at Princeton and his memory is treasured there now.

Wyllys Terry

One of the greatest halfbacks that ever played for Yale is Wyllys Terry, and it is most interesting to hear this player of many years ago tell of some of his experiences. Terry says:

"It has been asked of me who were the great players of my time. I can only say, judging from their work, that they were all great, but if I were compelled to particularize, I should mention the names of Tompkins, Peters, Hull, Beck, Twombly, Richards; in fact, I would have to mention each team year by year. To them I attribute the success of Yale's football in my time, and for many years after that to the unfailing zeal and devotion of Walter Camp.

"There were no trainers, coaches, or rubbers at that time. The period of practice was almost continuous for forty-five minutes. It was the idea in those days that by practice of this kind, staying power and ability would be brought out. The principal points that were impressed upon the players were for the rushers to tackle low and follow their man.

"This was to them practically a golden text. The fact that a man was injured, unless it was a broken bone, or the customary badly sprained ankle, did not relieve a man from playing every day.

"It was the spirit, though possibly a crude one, that only those men were wanted on the team who could go through the battering of the game from start to finish.

"The discipline of the team was rigorous; men were forced to do as they were told. If a man did not think he was in any condition to play he reported to the captain. These reports were very infrequent though, for I know in my own case, the first time I reported, I was so lame I could hardly put one foot before the other, but was told to take a football and run around the track, which was a half mile long and encircled the football field. On my return I was told to get back in my position and play. As a result, there were very few players who reported injuries to the captain.

"This, when you figure the manner in which teams are coached to-day, may appear brutal and a waste of good material, but as a matter of fact, it was not. It made the teams what they were in those days—strong, hard and fast.

"As to actual results under this policy, I can only say that, during my period in college, we never lost a game.

"Training to-day is quite different. I think more men are injured nowadays than in my time under our severe training. I think further that this softer training is carried to an extreme, and that the football player of to-day has too much attention paid to his injury, and what he has to say, and the trainer, doctors and attendants are mostly responsible for having the players incapacitated by their attention.

"The spirit of Yale in my day, a spirit which was inculcated in our minds in playing games, was never to let a member of the opposing team think he could beat you. If you experienced a shock or were injured and it was still possible to get back to your position either in the line or backfield—get there at once. If you felt that your injury was so severe that you could not get back, report to your captain immediately and abide by his decision, which was either to leave the field or go to your position.

"It may be said by some of the players to-day that the punts in those days were more easily caught than those of to-day. There is nothing to a remark like that. The spiral kick was developed in the fall of '82, and I know that both Richards and myself knew the fellow who developed it. From my experience in the Princeton game I can testify that Alex Moffat was a past master at it.

"One rather amusing thing I remember hearing years ago while standing with an old football player watching a Princeton game. The ball was thrown forward by the quarterback, which was a foul. The halfback, who was playing well out, dashed in and caught the ball on the run, evaded the opposing end, pushed the half back aside and ran half the length of the field, scoring a touchdown. The applause was tremendous. But the Umpire, who had seen the foul, called the ball back. A fair spectator who was standing in front of me, asked my friend why the ball was called back. My friend remarked: 'The Princeton player has just received an encore, that's all.'

"While the game was hard and rough in the early days, yet I consider that the discipline and the training which the men went through were of great assistance to them, physically, morally and intellectually, in after years. Some of the pleasantest friendships that I hold to-day were made in connection with my football days, among the graduates of my own and other colleges.

"When fond parents ask the advisability of letting their sons play football, I always tell them of an incident at the Penn-Harvard game at Philadelphia, one year, which I witnessed from the top of a coach. A young girl was asked the question:

"'If you were a mother and had a son, would you allow him to play football?'

"The young lady thought for a moment and then answered in this spirited, if somewhat devious, fashion:

"'If I were a son and had a mother, you bet I'd play!'"

Memories of John C. Bell

In my association with football, among the many friendships I formed, I prize none more highly than that of John C. Bell, whose activity in Pennsylvania football has been kept alive long since his playing day. Let us go back and talk the game over with him.

"I played football in my prep. school days," he says, "and on the 'Varsity teams of the University of Pennsylvania in the years '82-'83-'84. After graduation, following a sort of nominating mass meeting of the students, I was elected to the football committee of the University, about 1886, and served as chairman of that committee until 1901; retiring that season when George Woodruff, after a term of ten years, terminated his relationship as coach of our team.

"I also served, as you know, as a representative of the University on the Football Rules Committee from about 1886 until the time I was appointed Attorney General in 1911.

"More pleasant associations and relationships I have never had than those with my fellow-members of that Committee in the late '80's and the '90's, including Camp of Yale; Billy Brooks, Bert Waters, Bob Wrenn and Percy Haughton of Harvard; Paul Dashiell of Annapolis; Tracy Harris, Alex Moffat and John Fine of Princeton; and Professor Dennis of Cornell. Later the Committee, as you know, was enlarged by the admission of representatives from the West; and among them were Alonzo Stagg, of Chicago University, and Harry Williams of Minnesota. Finer fellows I have never known; they were one and all Nature's noblemen.

"Some of them, alas! like Alex Moffat, have gone to the Great Beyond. Representing rival universities, between whose student bodies and some of whose alumni, partisan feeling ran high in the '90's, nothing, however, save good fellowship and good cheer ever existed between Alex and me.

"I am genuinely glad that I played the game with my team-mates; witnessed for many years nearly all the big games of the eastern colleges; mingled season after season with the players and the enthusiastic alumni of the competing universities in attendance at the annual matches; sat and deliberated each recurring year, as I have said, with those fine fellows who made and amended the rules, and in this way helped to develop the game, the manliest of all our sports; and that I have thus breathed, recreated and been invigorated in a football atmosphere every autumn for more than a third of a century. Growing older every year, one still remains young—as young in heart and spirit as when he donned the moleskins, and caught and kicked and carried the ball himself. And all these football experiences make one a happier, stronger and more loyal man.

"I remember in my prep. school days playing upon a team made up largely of high school boys. One game stands out in my recollection. It was against the Freshmen team of the University of Pennsylvania, captained by Johnny Thayer who went down with the Titanic.

"Arriving after the game had started, I came out to the side-lines and called to the captain asking whether I was to play. He glowered at me and made no answer. A few minutes later our 'second captain' called to me to come into the game, saying that Smith was only to play until I arrived. Quick as a flash I stepped into the field of play, and almost instantly Thayer kicked the ball over the rush line and it came bounding down right into my arm. Off I went like a flash through the line, past the backs and fullbacks, only to be over-taken within a few yards of the goal. The teams lined up, and thereupon Thayer, with his eagle eye looking us over, called out to our captain 'how many fellows are you playing anyway?' Instantly our captain ordered Smith off the field saying 'you were only to play until Bell came,' and poor Smith left without any audible murmur. This is what might be called one of the accidents of the game.

"Perhaps the most memorable game in which I played was against Harvard in 1884 when Pennsylvania won upon Forbes Field by the score of 4 to 0. It was our first victory over the Crimson, not to be repeated again until the memorable game of 1894, which triumph was again repeated, after still another decade, in our great victory of 1904. This last victory came after five years of continuing defeats, and I remember that we were all jubilant when we heard the news from Cambridge. I recall that Dr. J. William White, C.S. Packard and I were playing golf at the Country Club and when some one brought out the score to us we dropped our clubs, clasped hands and executed an Indian dance, shouting "Rah! rah! rah! Pennsylvania!" Why, old staid philosopher, should the leading surgeon of the city, the president of its oldest and largest trust company, and the district attorney of Philadelphia, thus jump for joy and become boys once more?

"Recurring to the game of 1884 I can hear the cheers of the University still ringing in my ears when we returned from Harvard. A few weeks later our team went up to Princeton to see the Harvard-Princeton match and I recall, as though it were yesterday, Alex Moffat kicking five goals against Appleton's team, three of them with the right and two with the left foot. No other player I ever knew or heard of was so ambipedextrous (if I may use the word) as Alex Moffat. I remember walking in from the field with Harvard's captain, and he said to me 'Moffat is a phenomenon.' Truly he was."