“Doubtless much of this was due to the strain and the high tension to which the men were subjected, but much of it was mere lack of effort at restraint.

“Johnny Poe, as stout-hearted a man as ever has, or ever will stand on a football field, once said to me: 

“’This sob stuff gives me a pain in the neck but, like sea-sickness, when the rest of the crowd start business, it’s hard to keep out of it.  Besides, I don’t suppose there’s any use getting the reputation of being exclusive and too stuck up to do what the rest of the gang do.’

“Of the defeats in which I participated, probably none was more disheartening than the one suffered at the hands of the University of Pennsylvania in 1892 at the Manheim cricket grounds near Philadelphia.  I shall always believe that the better Princeton team would have won with comparative ease had it not been for the wind.  In no game in which I ever played was the wind so largely the deciding factor in the result.  The flags on the poles along the stands stood out stiffly as they snapped in the half gale.

“Pennsylvania won the toss and elected to have the wind at their backs.  For forty-five minutes every effort made against the Red and Blue was more than nullified by the blustering god AEolus.  When Pennsylvania kicked, it was the rule and not the exception for the ball to go sailing for from one-half to three quarters the length of the field.  On the other hand, I can see in my mind’s eye to-day, as clearly as I did during the game, a punt by Sheppard Homans, the Princeton fullback, which started over the battling lines into Pennsylvania territory, slowed up, hung for an instant in the air and then was swept back to a point approximating the line from where it started.

“It was the most helpless and exasperating feeling that I ever experienced.  The football player who can conceive of a game in which under no circumstances was it permissible to kick, but instead provided a penalty, can perhaps appreciate the circumstances.

“In the second half, when we changed goals, the flags hung limply against their staffs, but we had spent ourselves in the unequal contest during the first half.”

Nightmares, even those of football, do not always beget sympathy.  Upon occasion a deal of fun is poked at the victim, and this holds true even in the family circle.

Tom Shevlin was noted as the father of a great many good stories, but it was proverbial that he refrained from telling one upon himself.  However, in at least one instance he deviated from habit to the extent of relating an incident concerning his father and the father of Charlie Rafferty, captain of the Yale 1903 eleven.  Tom at the time was a sophomore, and Shevlin, senior, who idolized his son, made it a practice of attending all important contests in which he participated, came on from Minneapolis in his private car to witness the spectacle of Tom’s single-handed defeat of “The Princetons.”