“That’s the day I made the Yale team.

“I was twenty years old, six feet tall, and weighed about 200 pounds.”

When I asked Sandy who gave him the hardest game of his life, he replied promptly: 

“Wharton, of Pennsylvania.  He got through me.”

Parke Davis’ enthusiasm for football is known the country over.  From his experience as a player, as a coach and writer, he has become an authority.  Let us read some of his recollections.

“Years ago there was a high spirited young player at Princeton serving his novitiate upon the scrub.  One day an emergency transferred him for the first time in his career to the Varsity.  The game was against a small college.  This sudden promotion was possible through his fortunate knowledge of the varsity signals.  Upon the first play a fumble occurred.  Our hero seized the ball.  A long service upon the scrub had ingrained him to regard the Princeton Varsity men always as opponents.  In the excitement of the play he became confused, when lo! he leaped into flight toward the wrong goal.  Dashing around Princeton’s left end he reversed his field and crossed over to the right.  Phil King, Princeton’s quarterback, was so amazed at the performance that he was too spellbound to tackle his comrade.  Down the backfield the player sped towards his own goal.  Shep Homans, his fullback, took in the impending catastrophe at a glance and dashed forward, laid the halfback low with a sharp tackle, thereby preventing a safety.  The game was unimportant, the Princeton’s score was large, so the unfortunate player, although the butt of many a jest, soon survived all jokes and jibes and became in time a famous player.”

“The first Princeton-Yale game in 1873 being played under the old Association rules was waged with a round ball.  In the first scrimmage a terrific report sounded across the field.  When the contending players had been separated the poor football was found upon the field a flattened sheet of rubber.  Two toes had struck it simultaneously or some one’s huge chest had crushed it and the ball had exploded.

“Whenever men are discussing the frantic enthusiasm of some fellows of the game I always recall the following episode as a standard of measurement.  The Rules Committee met one night at the Martinique in New York for their annual winter session.  Just as the members were going upstairs to convene, I had the pleasure of introducing George Foster Sanford to Fielding H. Yost.  The introduction was made in the middle of the lobby directly in the way of the traffic passing in and out of the main door.  The Rules Committee had gone into its regular session; the hour was eight o’clock in the evening.  When they came down at midnight these two great football heroes were standing in the very spot where they were introduced four hours before and they were talking as they had been every minute throughout the four hours about football.  Members of the Committee joked with the two enthusiasts and then retired.  When they came down stairs the next morning at eight o’clock they found the two fanatics seated upon a bench nearby still talking football, and that afternoon when the Committee had finished its labors and had adjourned sine die they left Sanford and Yost still in the lobby, still on the bench, hungry and sleepy and still talking football.”