"A young fellow named Hodge, who was quarterback on the Princeton scrub, was making a terrific effort to play the best he could on the last day of practice before the Yale game. He had hoped even at the last hour that the opportunity might be afforded him to be a substitute quarter in the game. However, his leg was broken in a scrimmage. As he lay on the ground in great pain, realizing what had happened and forgetting himself, he looked up and said:
"'I'm mighty glad it is not one of the regulars who is hurt, so that our chance against Yale will not be affected.'"
Crolius, one of the hardest men to stop that Dartmouth ever had, tells of Arthur Poe's gameness, when they played together on the Homestead Athletic Club team, after they left college. "Arthur Poe was about as game a man as the football world ever saw. He was handicapped in his playing by a knee which would easily slip out of place. We men who played with him on the Homestead team were often stopped after Arthur had made a magnificent tackle and had broken up heavy interference, with this quiet request:
"'Pull my bum knee back into place.'
"After this was done, he would jump up and no one would ever know that it had been out. This man, who perhaps was the smallest man playing at that time, was absolutely unprotected. His suit consisted of a pair of shoes, stockings, unpadded pants, jersey and one elastic knee bandage."
Mike Donohue, a Yale man who had been coach at Auburn for many years, vouches for the following story:
When Mike went to Auburn and for several years thereafter he had no one to assist him, except a few of the old players, who would drop in for a day or so during the latter part of the season. One afternoon Mike happened to glance down at the lower end of the field where a squad of grass-cutters (the name given to the fourth and fifth teams) were booting the ball around, when he noticed a pretty good sized boy who was swinging his foot into the ball with a good stiff leg and was kicking high and getting fine distance. Mike made a mental note of this fact and decided to investigate later, as a good punter was very hard to find.
Later in the afternoon he again looked towards the lower end of the field and saw that the grass-cutters were lining up for a scrimmage among themselves, using that part of the field, which was behind the goal post, so he dismissed the squad with which he had been working and went down to see what the boy he had noticed early in the afternoon really looked like. When he arrived he soon found the boy he was looking for. He was playing left end and Mike immediately noticed that he had his right leg extended perfectly straight behind him. Stopping the play, Mike went over to the fellow and slapping him on the back said:
"Don't keep that right leg stiff behind you like that. Pull it up under you. Bend it at the knee so you can get a good start."
With a sad expression on his face, and tears almost in his eyes, the boy turned to Mike and said: