house and hailed us:  ’Where is that young freshman that is out for my team?  I would like to have him take a little walk with me.’  And these walks, incidentally, had little or nothing to do with football.  They were great opportunities for the little freshman who wanted to get closer to the character of the man himself.  No flower, no bit of moss, no striking patch of foliage escaped his notice, for he loved them all, and loved to talk about them.  One felt, returning from one of these impromptu rambles, that he had been spending valuable time in that most wonderful church of all, the great outdoors, and spending it with no casual interpreter.  Memories of those days in the sharp practice on the field grow dim, but these others I know will always endure.

“This I know because no month passes, indeed it is almost safe to say, hardly a week, year in and year out, in which they are not insistently resurgent.

“Marshall Newell was born in Clifton, N. J., on April 2, 1871.  His early life was spent largely on his father’s farm in Great Barrington, Mass., that farm and countryside which seemed to mean so much to him in later years.  He entered Phillips Exeter Academy in the fall of 1887, and was graduated in 1890.  Almost at once he achieved, utterly without effort, a popularity rare in its quality.  Because of his relation with his schoolmates and his unostentatious way of looking after the welfare of others, he soon came to be known as Ma Newell, and this affectionate sobriquet not only clung to him through all the years at Exeter and Harvard, but followed him after graduation whithersoever he went.  While at school he took up athletics ardently as he always took up everything.  Thus he came up to Harvard with an athletic reputation ready made.

“It was not long before the class of ’94 began to feel that subtler influence of character that distinguished all his days.  He was a member of the victorious football eleven of 1890, and of the winning crew of 1891, both in his freshman year.  He also played on the freshman football team and on the university team of ’91, ’92, ’93, and rowed on the Varsity crews of ’92 and ’93.  In the meantime he was gaining not only the respect and friendship of his classmates, but those of the instructors as well.  Socially, and despite the fact that he was little endowed with this world’s goods, he enjoyed a remarkable popularity.  He was a member of the Institute of 1770, Dickey, Hasty Pudding, and Signet.  In addition, he was the unanimous choice of his class for Second Marshal on Class Day.  Many other honors he might have had if he had cared to seek them.  He accepted only those that were literally forced upon him.

“In the course of his college career he returned each summer to his home in Great Barrington and quietly resumed his work on the farm.

“After graduation he was a remarkably successful football coach at Cornell University, and was also a vast help in preparing Harvard elevens.  His annual appearance in the fall at Cambridge was always the means of putting fresh heart and confidence in the Crimson players.