“More pleasant associations and relationships I have never had than those with my fellow-members of that Committee in the late ’80’s and the ’90’s, including Camp of Yale; Billy Brooks, Bert Waters, Bob Wrenn and Percy Haughton of Harvard; Paul Dashiell of Annapolis; Tracy Harris, Alex Moffat and John Fine of Princeton; and Professor Dennis of Cornell.  Later the Committee, as you know, was enlarged by the admission of representatives from the West; and among them were Alonzo Stagg, of Chicago University, and Harry Williams of Minnesota.  Finer fellows I have never known; they were one and all Nature’s noblemen.

“Some of them, alas! like Alex Moffat, have gone to the Great Beyond.  Representing rival universities, between whose student bodies and some of whose alumni, partisan feeling ran high in the ’90’s, nothing, however, save good fellowship and good cheer ever existed between Alex and me.

“I am genuinely glad that I played the game with my team-mates; witnessed for many years nearly all the big games of the eastern colleges; mingled season after season with the players and the enthusiastic alumni of the competing universities in attendance at the annual matches; sat and deliberated each recurring year, as I have said, with those fine fellows who made and amended the rules, and in this way helped to develop the game, the manliest of all our sports; and that I have thus breathed, recreated and been invigorated in a football atmosphere every autumn for more than a third of a century.  Growing older every year, one still remains young—­as young in heart and spirit as when he donned the moleskins, and caught and kicked and carried the ball himself.  And all these football experiences make one a happier, stronger and more loyal man.

“I remember in my prep. school days playing upon a team made up largely of high school boys.  One game stands out in my recollection.  It was against the Freshmen team of the University of Pennsylvania, captained by Johnny Thayer who went down with the Titanic.

“Arriving after the game had started, I came out to the side-lines and called to the captain asking whether I was to play.  He glowered at me and made no answer.  A few minutes later our ‘second captain’ called to me to come into the game, saying that Smith was only to play until I arrived.  Quick as a flash I stepped into the field of play, and almost instantly Thayer kicked the ball over the rush line and it came bounding down right into my arm.  Off I went like a flash through the line, past the backs and fullbacks, only to be over-taken within a few yards of the goal.  The teams lined up, and thereupon Thayer, with his eagle eye looking us over, called out to our captain ’how many fellows are you playing anyway?’ Instantly our captain ordered Smith off the field saying ‘you were only to play until Bell came,’ and poor Smith left without any audible murmur.  This is what might be called one of the accidents of the game.