for there were more and mightier men among their opponents.  Had we been victorious, it would have behooved us, according to established precedents, to challenge the Junior Class, which was not done.  Such a result, if it had taken place, could not fade from the memory of the victors; while failure, on the contrary, being an issue to be looked for, would soon be dismissed from the thoughts of the vanquished.  Instances had occurred of the triumph of the Freshman Class, and one of them recent, when a challenge in due form was sent to the Juniors, who, thinking the contest too doubtful, wisely resolved to let the victors rejoice in their laurels already won; and, declining to meet them in the gymnasium, invited them to a sumptuous feast instead.

“Wrestling was, at an after period, I cannot say in what year, superseded by football; a grovelling and inglorious game in comparison.  Wrestling is an art; success in the exercise depends not on mere bodily strength.  It had, at the time of which I have spoken, its well-known and acknowledged technical rules, and any violation of them, alleged against one who had prostrated his adversary, became a matter of inquiry.  If it was found that the act was not achieved secundum artem, it was void, and might be followed by another trial.”—­Vol.  I. pp. 260, 261.

Remarks on this subject are continued in another part of the work from which the above extract is made, and the story of Thomas Mason is related, with a few variations from the generally received version.  “Wrestling,” says Professor Willard, “was reduced to an art, which had its technical terms for the movement of the limbs, and the manner of using them adroitly, with the skill acquired by practice in applying muscular force at the right time and in the right degree.  Success in the art, therefore, depended partly on skill; and a violation of the rules of the contest vitiated any apparent triumph gained by mere physical strength.  There were traditionary accounts of some of our predecessors who were commemorated as among the coryphaei of wrestlers; a renown that was not then looked upon with contempt.  The art of wrestling was not then confined to the literary gymnasium.  It was practised in every rustic village.  There were even migrating braves and Hectors, who, in their wanderings from their places of abode to villages more or less distant, defied the chiefest of this order of gymnasts to enter the lists.  In a country town of Massachusetts remote from the capital, one of these wanderers appeared about half a century since, and issued a general challenge against the foremost wrestlers.  The clergyman of the town, a son of Harvard, whose fame in this particular had travelled from the academic to the rustic green, was apprised of the challenge, and complied with the solicitation of some of his young parishioners to accept it in their behalf.  His triumph over the challenger was completed without agony or delay, and having prostrated him often enough to convince him of his folly, he threw him over the stone wall, and gravely admonished him against repeating his visit, and disturbing the peace of his parish.”—­Vol.  I. p. 315.