Nobody knows better than men who train how easy it is for an athlete to get thrown out of order by a change in diet and air. The finer the training the greater care there has to be.
Therefore, the managing committee for Yale felt that it was absolutely necessary to give the contestants at least two whole days in New York City, in order to get used to the slight change that would result in their leaving familiar quarters in New Haven.
Students who were not contestants in the intercollegiate sports were not allowed to leave New Haven so early, and so it was a comparatively small party that went with Frank and the other members of the committee to rooms that had been engaged for them in the Murray Hill Hotel.
It would probably have amused an outsider if he could have known the great care taken to prevent those students from being harmed by illness or anything else.
They were grown men and able to take care of themselves ordinarily, but from the time they went into training they were like so many children in charge of a nurse.
They were informed as to just what they could eat and what they must let alone. Not one of them was permitted to smoke, and every one of them was required to do just so many hours of exercise of some kind every day.
While they remained in New Haven it was no very difficult matter to see to it that every one of the contestants obeyed the regulations of the managing committee.
In New York it was not quite so easy, for the members of the committee were a good deal occupied in discussing arrangements with the committees from other colleges who were quartered at different hotels.
When it happened that all the committee had to be away from the Murray Hill at the same time, the oversight of the Yale crew was left to Browning, who was the most experienced athlete among them.
There was not much for him to do, for each one of the contestants had a programme of exercise laid out for him.