Football Days | Page 5

sight. The noise made by the Yale students I learned
afterwards was college cheering, and college cheers once heard by a
boy are never forgotten.
Many in that throng were going to the game. I could not go, but the
scene that I had just witnessed gave me an inspiration. It stirred
something within me, and down deep in my soul there was born a
desire to go to college.
I made my way directly to the Y. M. C. A. gymnasium, then at the

corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. Athletics had for me
a greater attraction than ever before, and from that day I applied myself
with increased enthusiasm to the work of the gymnasium.
The following autumn I entered St. John's Military Academy at
Manlius, N. Y., a short distance from my old home. I was only
seventeen years of age and weighed 217 pounds.
Former Adjutant General William Verbeck--then Colonel
Verbeck--was Head Master. Before I was fairly settled in my room, the
Colonel had drafted me as a candidate for the football team. I wanted to
try for the team, and was as eager to make it as he evidently was to
have me make it. But I did not have any football togs, and the supply at
the school did not contain any large enough.
So I had to have some built for me. The day they arrived, much to my
disappointment, I found the trousers were made of white canvas. Their
newness was appalling and I pictured myself in them with feelings of
dismay. I robbed them of their whiteness that night by mopping up a lot
of mud with them behind the gymnasium. When they had dried--by
morning--they looked like a pair of real football trousers.
George Redington of Yale was our football coach. He was full of
contagious fire. Redington seemed interested in me and gave me much
individual coaching. Colonel Verbeck matched him in love of the game.
He not only believed in athletics, but he played at end on the second
team, and it was pretty difficult for the boys to get the best of him.
They made an unusual effort to put the Colonel out of the plays, but, try
as hard as they might, he generally came out on top. The result was a
decided increase in the spirit of the game.
We had one of the best preparatory school teams in that locality, but
owing to our distance from the larger preparatory schools, we were
forced to play Syracuse, Hobart, Hamilton, Rochester, Colgate, and
Cazenovia Seminary--all of whom we defeated. We also played against
the Syracuse Athletic Association, whose team was composed of
professional athletes as well as former college players. Bert Hanson,
who had been a great center at Yale, was one of this team.

[Illustration:
H. Wallis Coxe Cochran Nessler Heffelfinger W. Winter Mills Sanford
Hartwell Morrison Graves Stillman McCormick McClung L. T. Bliss C.
Bliss Hinkey Barbour T. Dyer
OLD YALE HEROES--LEE McCLUNG'S TEAM]
Recalling the men who played on our St. John's team, I am confident
that if all of them had gone to college, most of them would have made
the Varsity. In fact, some did.
It was decided that I should go to Lawrenceville School, en route to
Princeton. It was on the trip from Trenton to Lawrenceville, in the big
stage coach loaded with boys, I got my first dose of homesickness. The
prospect of new surroundings made me yearn for St. John's.
The "blue hour" of boyhood, however, is a brief one. I was soon
engaged in conversation with a little fellow who was sitting beside me
and who began discussing the ever-popular subject of football. He was
very inquisitive and wanted to know if I had ever played the game, and
if I was going to try for the team.
He told me about the great game Lawrenceville played with the
Princeton Varsity the year before, when Lawrenceville scored six
points before Princeton realized what they were really up against. He
fascinated me by his graphic description. There was a glowing account
of the playing of Garry Cochran, the great captain of the Lawrenceville
team, who had just graduated and gone to Princeton, together with
Sport Armstrong, the giant tackle.
These men were sure to live in Lawrenceville's history if for nothing
else than the part they had played in that notable game, although
Princeton rallied and won 8 to 6. It was not long before I learned that
my newly-made friend was Billy McGibbon, a member of the
Lawrenceville baseball team.
"Just wait until you see Charlie de Saulles and Billy Dibble play behind

the line," he went on; and from that moment I began to be a part of the
new life, the threshold of which I was