men and conditioning them.  Joe Swann, the field coach, and Walter Camp were in accord, so we turned down the advice of a lot of the older coaches and gave the Varsity only about five minutes’ scrimmage during the week and a half preceding the Princeton game, with the exception of the Bucknell game the Saturday before.  During the week before the Princeton and Harvard games we went up to Ardsley and had no practice for three days.  There was a five-minutes’ scrimmage on Thursday.  This was an unusual proceeding, but it was so intensely hot the day of the Princeton game, and we all lost so much weight something unusual had to be done.  The team played well in the Princeton game, but it was simply a coming team then.  In the Harvard game, which we won 23 to 0, it seemed to me that we were at the top of our form.

“I think the whole incident was a lesson to us at New Haven of the great value of condition to men who know a great deal of football.  I know from my own experience during the three preceding years that it had been too little thought of.  The great cry had too often been ’We must drum football into them, no matter what their physical condition.’

“After the terribly exhausting game at Princeton, which we won, 12 to 5, DeWitt Cochrane invited the team to go to his place at Ardsley and recuperate.  It really was our salvation, and I have always been most grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Cochrane for so generously giving up their house completely to a mob of youngsters.  We spent three delightful days, almost forgot football entirely, ate ravenously and slept like tops.

“Big Eddie Glass was a wonderful help in interference.  I used to play left half and Eddie left guard.  On plays where I would take the ball around the end, or skirting tackle, Eddie would either run in the interference or break through the line and meet me some yards beyond.  We had a great pulling and hauling team that year, and the greatest puller and hauler was Eddie Glass.  Perry Hale, who played fullback my sophomore year, was a great interferer.  He was big, and strong and fast.  On a straight buck through tackle, when he would be behind me, if there was not a hole in the proper place, he would whirl me all the way round and shoot me through a hole somewhere else.  It would, of course, act as an impromptu delayed play.  In one game I remember making a forty yard run to a touchdown on such a manoeuver.”

[Illustration: 

McCord Mills Roper Burke Pell Craig Mattis Lathrope Lloyd Bannard Booth
Wheeler Reiter
Poe Edwards Hillebrand
Hutchinson Palmer McClave

PRINCETON’S 1899 TEAM]

Arthur Poe

There never was as much real football ability concealed in a small package as there was in that great player, Arthur Poe.  He was always using his head, following the ball, strong in emergency.  He was endowed with a wonderful personality, and a man who always got a lot of fun out of the game and made fun for others, but yet was on the job every minute.  He always inspired his team mates to play a little harder.  Rather than write anything more about this great player, let us read with him the part he so ably played in some of Princeton’s football games.