Chauncey M. Depew in his address that evening stated that for the only time in one hundred and eighty-eight years the alumni of Yale met solely to celebrate her athletic triumphs.

Pa Corbin, captain of the victorious ’88 football team, responded, as follows: 

“Again we have met the enemy and he is ours.  In fact we have been successful so many times there is something of a sameness about it.  It is a good deal like what the old man said about leading a good life.  It is monotonous, but satisfactory.  There are perhaps a few special reasons why we won the championship this year, but the general principles are the same, which have always made us win.  First, by following out certain traditions, which are handed down to us year by year from former team captains and coaches; the necessity of advancing each year beyond the point attained the year before; the mastering of the play of our opponents and planning our game to meet it.  Second, by the hard, conscientious work, such as only a Yale team knows how to do.  Third, by going on to the field with that high courage and determination which has always been characteristic of the Yale eleven, something like the spirit of the ancient Greeks who went into battle with the decision to return with their shields or on them.  Sometimes they have been animated with the spirit which knows no defeat, like the little drummer boy, who was ordered by Napoleon in a crisis in the battle to beat a retreat.  The boy did not move.  ‘Boy, beat a retreat.’  He did not stir, but at a third command, he straightened up and said:  ’Sire, I know not how, but I can beat a charge that will wake the dead.’  He did so and the troops moved forward and were victorious.  It is this same spirit which in many cases has seemed to animate our men.

[Illustration: 

Rhodes Woodruff Heffelfinger Gill Wallace
Stagg McClung Captain Corbin Bull
Wurtenberg Graves

Pa Corbin’s team]

“But our victory is due in a great measure this year to a man who knows more about football than any man in this country, who gave much of his valuable time in continually advising and in actual coaching on the field.  I refer to Walter Camp, and as long as his spirit hovers over the Yale campus and our traditions for football playing are religiously followed out there is no reason why Yale should not remain, as she always has been, at the head of American football.”

Those were Corbin’s recollections the year of that great victory.  Time has not dimmed them, nor has his memory faded.  Rather the opposite.  From what follows you will note that a woman now enters the camp of the Eli coaching staff, mention of whom was not made in Corbin’s speech of ’88.

Pa Corbin prides himself in the fact that twenty-five years afterward he brought his old team mates together and gave them a dinner.  The menu card tells of the traditional coaching system of Corbin’s great team of ’88 and beneath the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Camp appears in headlines: