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Through all the press and conflict, he watched for it, followed it—just as, he thought in one whimsical moment, the French troopers of Macaulay’s poem watched for the white plume of Navarre. If he had known even less about the game than he did, he must still have seen that for Harvard his brother and Ballard, the fullback, were playing especially well.
The ball was now on the scrubs' forty-yard line. The player who had it fumbled in his eagerness to advance it, and the 'Varsity quarterback pounced on it like a hawk. With almost the same motion he passed it to the fullback. The opposing line bore down upon him frantically, but too late.
On plays where I would take the ball around the end, or skirting tackle, Eddie would either run in the interference or break through the line and meet me some yards beyond. We had a great pulling and hauling team that year, and the greatest puller and hauler was Eddie Glass. Perry Hale, who played fullback my sophomore year, was a great interferer. He was big, and strong and fast.
Of famous fathers whose football instinct descended without dilution into their sons perhaps the easiest remembered have been Walter Camp, who captained the Elis in '78 and '79 and whose son, Walter, Jr., played fullback in 1911 Alfred T. Baker, one of the Princeton backs in '83, and '84, whose son Hobey captained his team in 1914 Snake Ames, who played in four championship games for Princeton against both Yale and Harvard, and whose son, Knowlton Ames, Jr., played on the Princeton teams of '12, '13 and '14 and that sterling Yale tackle of '91 and '92, "Wallie" Winter, whose son, Wallace, Jr., played on his Freshman team in 1915.
"Will I?" laughed the fullback; "well, they'll wonder whether there's any bottom to my stomach today, for I've got a lot of neglected dinners to make up for, you know. The sky never did look one-half so bright to me as this morning, after I learned the great news.
There is no finer, unselfish spirit brought out in football, than that evidenced in the following story, told by Shep Homans, an old time Princeton fullback: "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.
The bewildered teams turn and follow close upon the flying figure, the speedy Berkeley right-half leading them. Back in the field stands the U. C. fullback, grimly waiting. The two collide, and the chasing halfback gains; but the Berkeley back drops to the tackle a fraction of an instant too late and runs fair against a straight-arm.
As a football player, he was an excellent punter, a good plunger, and a strong defensive man. On account of his kicking and plunging ability he was moved to fullback in his second year. In the Virginia game he backed up the line on the defense. All that afternoon he worked like a Trojan to hold in check the powerful masses Virginia had been driving at the tackles.
"While umpiring a game between Michigan and Ohio State, at Columbus," he says, "Heston, Michigan's fullback, carrying the ball, broke through the line, was tackled and thrown; recovered his feet, started again, was tackled and thrown again, threw off his tacklers only to be thrown again. Again he broke away. All this time I was backing up in front of the play.
The Stanford management did the only thing they could do by putting in Ashley, the scrub fullback; but this did not help matters materially. Ashley was a man of beautiful physique, and the most conscientious player on the field. There he stopped. He utterly lacked the head-work that Blake put into the game. For the star fullback had possessed the football instinct.
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