“In 1905 ‘Hooks’ Burr and I played the guard positions.  ‘Lew’ seemed to center his attention on us as we always received more ‘calls’ after each game than the other linemen for doing this, that, or the other thing wrong.  In the Brown game of this year Hooks played against a colored man who was exceptionally good and who, Hooks admitted afterward, ’put it all over’ him.  The Monday following this game we received our usual ‘call.’  After telling me what a rotten game I had played he turned on Burr and remarked.  ’What the devil was the matter with you on Saturday, Hooks?  That guard on the Brown team “smeared” you.’  Burr replied, ’I don’t know what was the matter with me.  I used my hands on that nigger’s head and body all through the game but it didn’t seem to do any good.’  Several of us who were listening felt a bit embarrassed that Hooks had unwittingly made this remark.  The tension was relieved, however, when Lew drawled out, ‘Why the devil didn’t you kick him in the shins?’ A burst of laughter greeted this sally.”

Donald Grant Herring, better known to football men in and out of Princeton as Heff, is one of the few American players of international experience.  After a period of splendid play for the Tigers he went to England with a Rhodes Scholarship.  At Merton College he continued his athletic career, and it was not long before he became a member of one of the most famous Rugby fifteens ever turned out by Oxford.

Heff has always said that he enjoyed the English game, but whether the brand he played was American or English, his opponent usually got little enjoyment out of a hard afternoon with this fine Princeton athlete.

“In the late summer of 1903, I was on a train coming east from Montana,” Heff tells me, “after a summer spent in the Rockies.  A companion recognized among the passengers Doc Hillebrand, who was coming East from his ranch to coach the Princeton team.  This companion who was still a Lawrenceville schoolboy, had the nerve to brace Hillebrand and tell him in my presence that I was going to enter Princeton that fall and that I was a star football player.  You can imagine what Doc thought, and how I felt.  However, Doc was kind enough to tell me to report for practice and to recognize me when I appeared on the field several weeks later.  I soon drifted over to the freshman field and I want to admit here what caused me to do so.  It was nothing more nor less than the size of Jim Cooney’s legs.  Jim was a classmate of mine whom I first saw on the football field when he and another tackle candidate were engaged in that delicate pastime known to linemen as breaking through.  I realized at once that, if Jim and I were ever put up against one another, I would stand about as much chance of shoving him back as I would if I tried to push a steam roller.  So I went over to the freshman field, where Howard Henry was coaching at the time.  He was sending ends down the field and I remember being thrilled, after beating a certain bunch of them, at hearing him say:  ‘You in the brown jersey, come over here in the first squad.’