o knows Eddie Hart and those who
have seen him play, know that he never saved himself but played the game
for all it was worth. He was the life and spirit of every team he ever
played on at Exeter or Princeton."
Ed Wylie, an enthusiastic Hill School Alumnus, football player at Hill
and Yale, tells the following anecdote:
"The nerviest thing I ever saw in a football game was in the
Hill-Hotchkiss 0 to 0 game in 1904. At the start of the second half,
Arthur Cable, who was Hill's quarterback, broke his collar-bone. He
concealed the fact and until the end of the game, no one knew how badly
he was hurt. He was in every play, and never had time called but once.
He caught a couple of punts with his one good arm and every other punt
he attempted to catch and muffed he saved the ball from the other side
by falling on it. In the same game, a peculiar thing happened to me. I
tackled Ted Coy about fifteen minutes before the end of the game, and
until I awoke hours later, lying in a drawing-room car, pulling into
the Grand Central Station, my mind was a blank. Yet I am told the last
fifteen minutes of the game I played well, especially when our line was
going to pieces. I made several gains on the offensive, never missed a
signal and punted two or three times when close to our goal line."
No less noteworthy is the spirit of a University of Pennsylvania player,
who was handicapped during his gridiron career with Penn' by many severe
injuries. This man had worked as hard as any one possibly could to make
the varsity for three years. His last year was no different from
previous seasons; injuries always worked against him. In his final year
he had broken his leg early in the season. A short time before the
Cornell game he appeared upon the field in football togs, full of spirit
and determined to get in the game if they needed him. This was his last
chance to play on the Penn' team.
I was an official in that game. Near its close I saw him warming up on
the side line. His knee was done up in a plaster cast. He could do
nothing better than hobble along the side lines, but in the closing
moments when Penn' had the game well in hand, a mighty shout went up
from the side lines, as that gallant fellow, who had been handicapped
all during his football career, rushed out upon the field to take his
place as the defensive halfback. Cornell had the ball, and they were
making a tremendous effort to score. The Cornell captain, not knowing
of
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