The battle between those giants during the second half was a sight worth seeing and an incident recalled by all those who witnessed the game.

Neither side scored and it was a hard-fought struggle.

One day, one play, often ruins a man’s chances.  I had played as a regular in the first three games of the season.  I was being tried out and had been found wanting.  I had proved a disappointment, and I knew Cochran knew it and I knew the whole college would know it, but I made up my mind to give the very best I had in me, and hoped to square myself later and make the team.  I knew what it was to be humiliated, taken out of a game, and to realize that I had not stood the test.  I began to reason it out—­maybe I was carried away with the fact of having played on the varsity team—­maybe I did not give my best.  Anyway I learned much that day.  It was my first big lesson of failure in football.  That failure and its meaning lived with me.

I have always had great respect for Rinehart, and his great team mates.  Walbridge and Barclay were a great team in themselves, backed up by Bray at fullback.  It was this same team that, later in the fall, beat Pennsylvania, without the services of Captain Walbridge, who had been injured.

It was not long after this that Princeton played Cornell at Princeton.  I recall the day I first saw Joe Beacham, that popular son of Cornell, who afterwards coached West Point.  He is now in the regular army, stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  He was captain of the Cornell team in ’96.  He had on his team the famous players, Dan Reed, on whom Cornell counts much in these years to assist Al Sharpe in the coaching; Tom Fennel, Taussig and Freeborn.  With these stars assisting, Cornell could do nothing with Princeton’s great team and the score 37 to 0 tells the tale.

I was not playing in this game, but recall the following incident.  Joe Beacham was making a flying run through the Princeton team.  A very pretty girl covered with furs, wearing the red and white of Cornell, was enthusiastically yelling at the top of her voice “Go it, Joe! go it, Joe!” much to the delight and admiration of the Princeton undergraduates near her.  Since then Joe has told me that it was his sister.  Maybe it was, but as Joe was rushing onward, with Dan Reed and Tom Fennel interfering wonderfully for him, and urged on by his fond admirer in the grandstand, his progress was rudely halted by the huge form of Edwin Crowdis which appeared like a cloud on the horizon and projected itself before the oncoming scoring machine of Cornell.  When they met, great was the crash, for Crowdis spilled the player, ball and all.  This was the time, the place, and the girl; and it meant that Edwin Crowdis had made the Princeton Varsity team.

[Illustration: 

Brink Thorne Hubby Bray Bishop Park Davis
Rowland Jones Walbridge Barclay Ziser Rinehart Herr Gates
Spear Best Weidenmeyer Hill Trexler