“He bravely faced the inevitable and expressed the wish that if he really had to go he might have with him at the last his comrades of the football field.  These team mates rallied at his request.  They surrounded him; they talked the old days over, and supported by those with whom he had fought for the glory of his college this real hero passed into the Great Beyond, and deep down in the traditions of Dartmouth and Exeter the name of Harry Hooper is indelibly written.”

The game of football is growing old.  The ranks of its heroes are being slowly but surely thinned.  The players are retiring from the game of life; some old and some young.  The list might go on indefinitely.  There are many names that deserve mention.  But this cannot be.  The list of thoroughbreds is a long one.  Yours must be a silent tribute.

Doctor Andrew J. McCosh, Ned Peace, Gus Holly, Dudley Riggs, Harry Brown, Symmes, Bill Black, Pringle Jones, Jerry McCauley, Jim Rhodes, Bill Swartz, Frank Peters, George Stillman, H. Schoellkopf, Wilson of the Navy and Byrne of the Army, Eddie Ward, Albert Rosengarten, McClung, Dudley and Matthews.

Richard Harding Davis and Matthew McClung were two Lehigh men whose position in the football world was most prominent.  The esteem in which they are held by their Alma Mater is enduring.  I had talked with Dick Davis when this book was in its infancy.  He was very much interested and asked that I write him a letter outlining what I would like to have him send me.  Just before he died I received this letter from him.  I regret he did not live to tell the story he had in mind.

[Illustration:  (Handwritten Letter)

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
MOUNT KISCO
NEW YORK

April 2nd

My Dear Edwards,

Yes, indeed.  As soon as I finish something I am at work on, I’ll “think back”, and write you some memoirs.

With all good wishes

Richard Harding Davis]

His interest in football had been a keen one.  He was one of the leaders at Lehigh, who first organized that University’s football team.  He was a truly remarkable player.  What he did in football is well known to men of his day.  He loved the game; he wrote about the game; he did much to help the game.

CHAPTER XXIII

ALOHA

“Hail and Farewell,” crowded by the Hawaiians into one pregnant word!  Would that this message might mean as much in as little compass.  I can promise only brevity and all that brevity means in so vast a matter as football to a man who would love nothing better than to talk on forever.

We know that football has really progressed and improved, and that the boys of to-day are putting football on a higher plane than it has ever been on before.  We are a progressive, sporting public.

Gone are the old Fifth Avenue horse buses, that used to carry the men to the field of battle; gone, too, are the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the Hoffman House, with their recollections of great victories fittingly celebrated.  The old water bucket and sponge, with which Trainer Jim Robinson used to rush upon the field to freshen up a tired player, are now things of the past.  To-day we have the spectacle of Pooch Donovan giving the Harvard players water from individual sanitary drinking cups!