stopped at one of the big hotels, and the rooms were on
the seventh and eighth floors. In the rooms were the rope fire escapes,
common in those days, knotted every foot or so. The big lineman asked
what it was for, and the other fellows told him, but added that this
room was the only one so equipped and that he must look sharp that none
of the others helped themselves to it for their protection against fire.

"That night, as usual, I was making my rounds after the fellows had gone
to bed. Coming into this player's room I saw that he was asleep, but
that there appeared to be some strange, unusual lump in the bed. I
immediately woke him to find out what it was. Much to my amusement, I
discovered that he had wound about fifteen feet of the rope around his
body and I had an awful job trying to assure him that the boys had been
fooling him. Nothing that I could say, however, would convince him, and
I left him to resume his slumbers with the rope still wrapped tightly
about his body."

Huggins not only believes that Brown University is a good place to
train, but he thinks it is a good place to send his boy. He has a son
who is a freshman at Brown as I write. Huggins went to Brown in the fall
of 1896, as trainer. Here is another good Huggins story:

"Sprackling, our All-American quarterback of a few years ago, always had
his nerve with him and, however tight the place, generally managed to
get out with a whole skin. But I recall one occasion when the wind was
taken out of his sails; he was at a loss what to say or how to act. We
were talking over prospects on the steps in front of the Brown Union one
morning just before college opened, the fall that he was captain, when a
young chap came up and said:

"'Are you Sprackling, Captain of the Team?'

"'That's me,' replied Sprack.

"'Well, I'm coming out for quarterback,' the young man declared, 'and I
expect to make it. I can run the 100 in ten-one and the 220 in evens and
I'm a good quarterback. I'm going to beat you out of your job.'

"Sprack, for once in his life, was flustered to death. When several of
the boys who were nearby and had heard the conversation, began to laugh,
he grew red in the face and quickly got up and walked away without a
word. But before I could recover myself, the promising candidate had
disappeared."

Harry Tuthill, specialist in knees and ankles, was the first trainer
West Point ever had. When he turned up at the Academy he was none too
sure th