The Patient Observer | Page 8

Mrs.
Harrington is suspicious and uneasy. She scents either a joke or an
insult; and we are all Mrs. Harrington. If you were to ask a stranger
whom did he consider the greatest playwright of all times and, instead
of Shakespeare or Molière, he were to say Racine, it would be as if one
were to ask him whether he took tea or coffee for breakfast and he said
arsenic. It would be as though you asked your neighbour what he

thought of a beautiful sunset and he said 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 mediæval 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

Pléiade, 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