The Patient Observer | Page 8

he did not like it. It would be as if I were to say to Mrs. Harrington, "Well, I suppose I have stayed quite long enough," and she were to say, "Yes, I think you had better be going."

V
THE MIND TRIUMPHANT
One night after dinner I quoted for Harding the following sentence from an address by President Lowell of Harvard: "The most painful defect in the American College at the present time is the lack of esteem for excellence in scholarship." Thereupon Harding recalled what some one had said on a related subject: "Athleticism is rooted in an exaggerated spirit of intercollegiate rivalry and a publicity run mad."
That night Harding dreamt the following:
From the Harvard "Crimson" for October 8, 1937:
"Twenty-five thousand men, women, and children in the Stadium yesterday broke into a delirium of cheers when the Cambridge team in Early English Literature won its fourth successive victory over Yale. Both sides were trained to the minute, however different the methods of the two head coaches. The Harvard team during the last two weeks had been put on a course of desultory reading from Bede to the closing of the theatres by the Puritans in 1642, while Yale had concentrated on the Elizabethan dramatists and signal practice.
"Harvard won the toss, and Captain Hartley led off with a question on the medi?val prototypes of Thomas More's 'Utopia.' Brooks of Yale made a snappy reply, and by a dashing string of three questions on the authorship of 'Ralph Roister-Doister,' the sources of Chaucer's 'Nonne's Preeste's Tale,' and the exact site of the Globe Theatre, carried the fight into the enemy's territory. But Harvard held well, and the contest was a fairly even one for twenty minutes. There was an anxious moment towards the end, when Gosse, for Harvard, muffed on the date of the first production of 'The Tempest,' but before Yale could frame another question the whistle blew.
"In the second half, Yale perceptibly weakened. It still showed brilliant flashes of attack, but its defence was poor, especially against Brooks's smashing questions on the Italian influences in Milton's shorter poems. Harvard made its principal gains against Burckhardt, who simply could not solve Winship's posers from Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher. The Yale coaches finally took him out and sent in Skinner, the best Elizabethan on the scrub team, but it was too late to save the day. There were rumours after the game that Burckhardt had broken training after the Princeton contest by going on a three days' canoe trip up the Merrimac. That, however, does not detract from the glory of Harvard's magnificent triumph."
From the Boston "Herald" of October 9, 1937:
"William J. Burns and Douglas Mitchell, sophomores at Harvard, were arrested last night for creating a disturbance in the dining-room of the Mayflower Hotel by letting loose a South American baboon with a pack of firecrackers attached to its tail. When arraigned before Magistrate Conroy, they declared that they were celebrating Harvard's Early English victory over Yale, and were discharged."
From the Yale "News" of June 12, 1940:
"In the presence of twenty thousand spectators, including the President of the United States, the greater part of his Cabinet, and several foreign ambassadors, Yale's 'varsity eight simply ran away from Harvard in the tenth annual competition in Romance languages and philology. Yale took the lead from the start, and at the end of fifteen minutes was ahead by 16 points to 7.... This splendid victory is due in part to the general superiority of the New Haven eight, but too much credit cannot be given to little Howells, who steered a flawless contest. The Blue made use of the short, snappy English style of text-book, while Harvard pinned its faith to the more deliberate German seminar system. After the contest captains for the following year were elected. Yale chose Bridgman, who did splendid work on Corneille and the poets of the Pl��iade, while Harvard's choice fell on Butterworth, probably the best intercollegiate expert on Cervantes. In the evening all the contestants attended a performance of 'The Prince and the Peach' at the Gaiety. It is reported that no less than nine out of the sixteen men have received flattering offers to coach Romance language teams in the leading Western universities."
From the "Daily Princetonian" of February 13, 1933:
"Princeton won the intercollegiate championship yesterday with 63 points to Harvard's 37, Yale's 18, and 7 each for Brown, Williams, and Pennsylvania. Princeton won by her brilliant work in the classics and biology. Firsts were made by Bentley, who did the 220 lines of Homer in 29-3/5 minutes, scanned 100 Alcaics from Horace in 62 seconds flat, and hurdled over nine doubtful readings and seven lacun? in the text of Aristotle's 'Poetics' in 17-1/2 minutes. Two firsts went to Ramsdell, who made only two errors in Protective Colouration