"Ames emerged from the game with nothing more than the usual number of cuts and bruises. At that time we did not have any nose-guards, head-guards and other paraphernalia such as are used nowadays, except that we could get ankle braces, and Ames wore one. That ankle stood the test during the fight.
"A majority of the other players were pretty well cut up. After Cowan was disqualified Bob (J. Robb) Church, subsequently Major in the United States Army Medical Corps and formerly the surgeon of Roosevelt's Rough Riders in the Spanish War, was shifted from tackle to Cowan's position at guard. Chapin, a brilliant student, who had changed from Amherst to Princeton, went in at tackle. He was a rather erratic player, and Harvard kept pounding in his direction with the result that Bob Church had a sea of trouble and I was forced to move up close to the line for defensive work. It was this that really put me out of business. My left shoulder had been hurt early in the season and it was bound in rubber, but fortunately it was not much worse off than at the beginning of the game.
"Bob Church risked his life more than once in the Spanish War and for his valor he received a Medal of Honor from Congress, but it is safe to say that he never got such a gruelling as in this Harvard game. He was battered to the extent of finding it difficult to rise after tackling and finally he was lining up on his knees. It was a magnificent exhibition of pluck. As I recall, Bob lasted to the end of the game.
"It was not until near the close that any scoring took place and then Harvard made two touchdowns in quick succession. We lacked substitutes to put in and, even if we had had them, it is doubtful whether we could have got them in as long as a player was able to stand up. The only satisfaction we had was that we had done the best we could to win and our confidence that with Cowan we could have won even if Holden had not been hurt. We had beaten Harvard the year before with essentially the same team that we played in this game."
CHAPTER XVI
THE FAMILY IN FOOTBALL
It is almost possible, I think, to divide football men into two distinct classes—those who are made into players (and often very good ones) by the coaches and those who are born with the football instinct. Just how to define football instinct is a puzzle, but it is very easy to discern it in a candidate, even if he never saw a football till he set foot on the campus. By and large, it will be read first in a natural aptitude for following the ball. After that, in the general way he has of handling himself, from falling on the ball to dodging and straight arm. Watch the head coach grin when some green six-foot freshman dives for a rolling ball and instinctively clutches it into the soft part of his body as he falls on it. Nobody told him to do it just that way, or to keep his long arms and legs under control so as to avoid accident, but he does it nevertheless and thus shows his football instinct.
There is still another kind of football instinct, and that is the kind that is passed down from father to son and from brother to brother. They say that the lacemakers of Nottingham don't have to be taught how to make lace because, as children, they somehow absorb most of the necessary knowledge in the bosom of their family, and I think the same thing is true of sons and brothers of football players. Generally, they pick up the essentials of the game from "Pop" long before they get to school or college or else are properly educated by an argus-eyed brother.