“‘Boys, I want you to sing the doxology.’”

“Standing as they were, naked and covered with mud, blood and perspiration, the eleven men that had won the championship sang the Doxology from the beginning to the end as solemnly and as seriously, and I am sure, as sincerely, as they ever did in their lives, while outside the no less thankful fellow-students yelled and cheered and beat at the doors and windows and howled for them to come out and show themselves.  This may strike some people as a very sacrilegious performance and as a most improper one, but the spirit in which it was done has a great deal to do with the question, and any one who has seen a defeated team lying on the benches of their dressing room, sobbing like hysterical school girls, can understand how great and how serious is the joy of victory to the men that conquer.”

Introducing Vic Kennard, opportunist extraordinary.  Where is the Harvard man, Yale man, or indeed any football man who will not be stirred by the recollection of his remarkable goal from the field at New Haven that provided the winning points for the eleven Percy Haughton turned out in the first year of his regime.  To Kennard himself the memory is still vivid, and there are side lights on that performance and indeed on all his football days at Cambridge, of which he alone can tell.  I’ll not make a conversation of this, but simply say as one does over the ’phone, “Kennard talking":—­

[Illustration:  VIC KENNARD’S KICK]

“Many of us are under the impression that the only real football fan is molded from the male sex and that the female of the species attends the game for decorative purposes only.  I protest.  Listen.  In 1908 I had the good fortune to be selected to enter the Harvard-Yale Game at New Haven, for the purpose of scoring on Yale in a most undignified way, through the medium of a drop-kick, Haughton realizing that while a touchdown was distinctly preferable, he was not afraid to fight it out in the next best way.

“My prayers were answered, for the ball somehow or other made its way over the crossbar and between the uprights, making the score, Harvard 4, Yale 0.  My mother, who had made her way to New Haven by a forced march, was sitting in the middle of the stand on the Yale (no, I’m wrong, it was, on second thought, on the Harvard side) accompanied by my two brothers, one of whom forgot himself far enough to go to Yale, and will not even to this day acknowledge his hideous mistake.

“Five or six minutes before the end of the game, one E. H. Coy decided that the time was getting short and Yale needed a touchdown.  So he grabbed a Harvard punt on the run and started.  Yes, he did more than start, he got well under way, circled the Harvard end and after galloping fifteen yards, apparently concluded that I would look well as minced meat, and headed straight for me, stationed well back on the secondary defense.  He had received no invitation whatsoever, but owing to the fact that I believe every Harvard man should be at least cordial to every Yale man, I decided to go 50-50 and meet him half way.