Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1894 — The Football Team. [ARTICLE]

The Football Team.

In the new life of the col ege the student sows less of the seeds of dyspepsia and nervous exhaustion than did bis father and grandfather, who went in for a sound mind, and were indifferent to s sound body. “To the playing of .O jtball go mental and moral qualities of no mean order,” writes Mr. MeirUm in his memorial of Dr. Noah Porter — “the soldier's virtues, although with some of the brutality of war." It was “the brutality” of the game which compe’led that Christian gentleman and scholar, Professor Green of Princeton Theological Seminary, to prohibit the “the iogues” from engaging in any football contest. There were complaints both loud and deeo uttered on the campus of Nassau Hall when that prohibition was made known: for several members of the Princeton football team were stalwart theological students, who played according to the law of natural selection —only the fittest survive. Doubtless they thought, when playing, of that ancient game in Palestine, when the players were Jews and Canaanites.

Yet, a few years ago the captain of the Princeton football team was the most devoted Christian in the college —Mr. Speer. There was no “brutality” when he ordered the game. It was a manly contest, which m ght have been opened and closed with prayers. The old Princeton and the old Yale man calls, “Halt!” He is not pleased that his boys take the gladiators of Rome for a mcdel. He says to them: “My sons, you are gentlemen, and should play football as gentlemen, and not as heathen mercenaries, hired to draw blood. let taet'es, brawn—made hard by days of self-denial — courage and endurance win; but don’t be rowdie . Don’t disgrace your ancesto -s by striking ‘below the belt;’ nor by kicking a man when he is down. “You are n t Roman gladiators, but Christian undergraduates!”