Instead of leaving Ithaca at 9:30 as we had planned, we hired a special engine to take our private cars to Owego there to await the express for New York on the main line.
My only pleasant recollection of that trip was a brief call I made at the home of a girl friend of mine, who had attended the game. My arm was in a sling and sympathy was welcome.
As our train rolled over the zig-zag road out of Ithaca, we had a source of consolation in the fact that we had evaded the send-off which the Cornell men had planned in the expectation that we were to leave on the later train.
There were no outstretched hands at Princeton for our homecoming. But every man on that Princeton team was grimly determined to learn the lesson of the Cornell defeat, to correct faults and leave nothing undone that would insure victory for Princeton in the coming game with Yale.
CHAPTER V
MY LAST GAME
Every player knows the anxious anticipation and the nerve strain connected with the last game of the football season. In my last year there were many men on the team who were to say good-bye to their playing days. Every player who reads these lines will agree with me that it was his keenest ambition to make his last game his best game.
It was in the fall of 1899. There were many of us who had played on a victorious team the year before. Princeton had never beaten Yale two years in succession. This was our opportunity. Our slogan during the entire season had been, "On to New Haven." The dominating idea in the mind of everyone was to add another victory over Yale to the one of the year before.