The team said Richard Carr’s “Baby” brought them luck, and they called him their “Mascot,” and presented him with a flag of the college colors; and when the weather grew colder they used to smother him in their white woollen jerseys, so that he looked like a fat polar bear.
It was a very pretty sight, indeed, to see how Richard Carr and the rest of the team, whenever they had scored or had made a good play, would turn first for their commendation to where Arthur sat perched above the crowd, waving his flag, his cheeks all aglow, and the substitute’s arm around him to keep him from falling over in his excitement. And the other teams who came to play at Princeton soon learned about the captain’s “Baby,” and inquired if he were on the field; and if he was, they would go up and gravely shake hands with him, as with some celebrated individual holding a public reception.
Richard Carr is out West now at the head of a great sheep ranch, and Arthur Waller enters Princeton next year. I do not know whether he will be on the team, though he is strong enough; but I am sure he will help to hand down the fame of Richard Carr, and that he will do it in such a way that his hero will be remembered as the possessor of certain qualities, perhaps not so highly prized, but almost as excellent, as were those which fitted him to be captain of the team.
THE GREAT TRI-CLUB TENNIS TOURNAMENT.
Charles Coleridge Grace, as he was called by the sporting editors, or Charley Grace, as he was known about college, had held the tennis championship of his Alma Mater ever since he had been a freshman.
Even before that eventful year he had carried off so many silver cups and highly ornamented racquets at the different tournaments all over the country, that his entering college was quite as important an event to the college as it was to Charles.
His career was not marked by the winning of any scholarships, nor by any brazen prominence in the way of first honors; and though the president may have wondered at the frequency of his applications to attend funerals, marriages, and the family dentist, he was always careful to look the other way when he met him hurrying to the station with three racquets in one hand and a travelling bag in the other.
Nor was he greatly surprised to read in the next morning’s paper that “this brought the winner of the last set and Charles Coleridge Grace together in the finals, which were won by Mr. Grace, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2.”
It was near the end of the first term in Grace’s junior year, and at the time when the dates of tournaments and examinations were hopelessly clashing, that he received another of many invitations to attend an open tournament. This particular circular announced that the N. L. T. A. of the United States had given the Hilltown Tennis Club permission to hold on their own grounds a tournament for the championship of the State.
Mr. Grace was cordially invited to participate, not only through the formal wording of the circular, but in a note of somewhat extravagant courtesy signed by the club’s secretary.