1905-1906. AGE 17-18
Borden’s college mottos; the first he illuminated for his room at Yale, the second he wrote in full on the flyleaf of his pocket Testament.
IT WAS AT CAMDEN that the reunion took place—the summer home on the coast of Maine which Mr. Borden had recently built. The golf links, bathing and yachting, delightful as they were, all took a secondary place compared with the renewed family intercourse and especially the times when William could be alone with his mother. College was drawing near, and there was more to look forward to than to look back upon after the first few days.
Is life anywhere on earth more real, more intense, more crowded with interest and full of opportunity than during the brief formative years of a college course? Into this absorbing life Borden plunged a month or so after his return to America. Yale with its fine old campus and still finer traditions was a new world to him, but one in which he was soon to take no unworthy part.
YALE, September 28, 1905
DEAR MOTHER―I am here, as you know, and the crises have passed. Yesterday I. took my Iliad examination and this afternoon learned that I had successfully passed it. As this was my only condition, I am now a member in full standing of the class of 1909....
On our arrival in New Haven, John [his brother} came up with me to this house, 242 York Street. My room is at the back and has a large bay-window in three sections, with an immense window seat. As none of my trunks had arrived, I went over with him to his rooms in White Hall. He and George have a very nice suite, two bedrooms and a sitting room, Things were in an awful mess though, as last year’s occupants hadn’t removed their stuff. We wandered around a while and met a good many fellows I knew. My trunks came in the afternoon, but I didn’t unpack much, as the general opinion is that it is best not to do so until Thursday. John took M. H. and myself down to Mori’s to dine. This is a little place―quite historic―where the fellows feed more or less. The tables have initials carved all over them, and in one room there is a special table on which seniors leave their trademarks.
After dinner I went back home and John left me. About 8:30 some sophomores came in and made me do a few foolish stunts which didn’t amount to much. I sang them a song and attempted to “scramble” like an egg, a very difficult thing to do, I assure you! However, they went after a few minutes and I was left in peace for the rest of the night.
The next morning I passed my Iliad examination, and in the afternoon registered at Alumni Hall. There also we were assigned to divisions and given study schedules, etc. In the afternoon I went out and watched the football practice and while out there met Bob Noyes, a Hill fellow, who very kindly invited me to dinner. So that night, the “awful night,” I dined with him and some other fellows, after which we went over to the campus to see the wrestling. Our dinner had taken us a long time, so we were late and the wrestling had already begun when we arrived. The seniors, without hats and with coats on inside out, were seated in a large circle with their torches on the ground in front of them. In the center were all the big “Y” men who were running the performance. I could only get a glimpse now and then of the doings inside, but the sophomores won the match by winning the third bout, the heavy weight, after the first two had been drawn.
After this the whole crowd adjourned to York Street and for a few minutes things were quite lively. Being peacefully inclined, we stayed up on the porch of 242 and looked on. Later, one of my visitors of the night before arrived, more (less drunk. There might have been something doing only Bob Noyes told him to leave me alone, for which I was thankful. I went over and slept with John that night, as George was putting up with someone else. So you see I have been well taken care of. I must quit now as there are lots of things to be done.
Oct. 1, 1905
DEAR MOTHER―This is Sunday evening and I have time to write you. I will take up the tale where I left off.
Friday morning our recitation began and I rather enjoyed mine. I don’t think the work will be very hard. However I won’t loaf just because it seems easy.... I am out trying for the freshman football eleven. As there are ninety-nine others doing likewise, there is a pretty good chance for your wish being fulfilled—that I should not make the team.
The opening of College has brought out all sorts of things. Nearly everyone uses a translation in his studies, that is in Greek and Latin. The great majority smoke, go to the theater Saturday night and do their studying on Sunday. Rather a hopeless state of affairs! However, there are some fine Christian men in College and in my own class too, I believe. And I hope to be able to do something, by the grace of God, to help in the right direction. I am taking meals next door at a table with seven other fellows. One of these fellows only, besides myself, doesn’t smoke and study on Sunday. I have only just met him but he seems like a pretty nice fellow. I must not criticize but rejoice that I am here in a position to give to others a little of what I have received. I am thankful for all the true teaching I have had from you, dear Mother, and Mr. Lombard, Walt and others. I know you are praying for me, so I don’t have to ask you to. And there are others also. I just had a letter from Walt, in which he said that an old English lady in the Mission had told him that she had prayed for us every day for the past year. What a thing Christian fellowship is and what a power prayer! I wish I had that little poem you sent me once, about the plowman at his work, praying, and the missionaries wondering how their words had such power, “because they did not see someone unknown, perhaps, and far away, on bended knee.”
This morning President Hadley preached in Chapel and gave a very good sermon for the opening of a college year. Only in impressing the necessity of having a fixed purpose in life and distinguishing between right and wrong, he neglected to say what our purpose should be, and where we should get the ability to persevere and the strength to resist temptations―things which seemed rather essential to me.
I forgot to mention the Dwight Hall reception which was held Friday night. The freshman class was invited to meet the President. I went and after we had all been introduced the President spoke and then others—the captains of the various teams and John Magee. The quartet also added to the entertainment and refreshments were served. It was a very nice informal gathering and I met a good many fellows....
Oh, I nearly forgot about this evening’s meeting! Dr. Henry Wright, son of the Dean, gave us a splendid address in Dwight Hall. It was the real true thing, and as he dealt with matters closely related to college life it was very helpful....
Dwight Hall and Henry Wright were to have so large a part in Borden’s experiences at Yale that it is important to understand their relation to the life of the University. From the recently published biography of Dr. Wright it is evident that he was in America very much what Henry Drummond had been in Scotland. His brilliant scholarship was almost lost sight of in his spiritual fervor, complete consecration and passion for winning men to Christ. He had a genius for friendship, and was young enough (twenty-eight when Borden entered) to be closely in touch with student life. He had taken his doctor’s degree in classics and had already been two years on the faculty, of which his father was dean, as a tutor in Greek and Latin. He had also been General Secretary of the Yale Y.M.C.A. (1898-1901), and it was during that period of his post-graduate studies that he came to be a campus figure.
Dignified, kindly, a trifle shy at times, always eager to be of use, he grew into the hearts of faculty and students alike. “In connection with my own undergraduate days,” said Prof. B. W. Kunkel of Lafayette College, “I look upon Henry’s smile of greeting at the head of the stairs in Dwight Hall, as we came to the meetings, as one of the benedictions which helped me through the week.”
Dwight Hall, the home of the Y.M.C.A., was still, when Borden entered Yale, what Henry Wright had made it. It stood for a high type of scholarship as well as Christian manhood. From the Sunday evening services, often gathering hundreds, to the group meetings and personal talks in the little room on the top floor, it was the scene of much of the best work done in the University. And it was the inheritor of a glorious past. For the Y.M.C.A., organized in 1881, had not been a beginning so much as a culmination of Christian activity in the University. It had been “adopted as the best channel for the expression of the rich heritage of two centuries of Yale’s religious traditions.”
Founded in the first instance (in 1701) as a college for training men for the ministry of the Gospel, Yale has always had a deeply religious basis, and has been visited in the past by many remarkable revivals of spiritual life. Under the mighty preaching of Whitefield, then only twenty-five years of age, the first of these took place (1740) and they have been repeated at intervals, so that we read of a whole series of revivals under the presidency of the first Dr. Timothy Dwight, continued through the lifetime of his devoted colleague, Professor Chauncey A. Goodrich. “As an undergraduate or instructor, the latter must have witnessed and was an important factor in all but two of the nineteen revivals that graciously visited Yale from the accession of President Dwight up to the Civil War.”
As far back as 1812-13 a revival swept the College which was distinctly a student movement. Several members of the senior class had been praying, mostly unknown to each other, for a spiritual awakening. Active opposition was expected from one student in particular, Elias Cornelius by name, and definite prayer was made for his conversion. Not long after, a sudden and complete change in this man made a great impression on the student body. He broke with evil companions and profanity, and soon was rejoicing in the consciousness of Christ’s presence and power to save. “He led nearly twenty members of his own class to the Christian faith... and by his labors from eighty to a hundred of all classes were awakened to a new sense of their Christian responsibility.”
Another remarkable revival in 1825 was due to the prayers of a single individual of but little standing in the College. He invited members of the University Church of more influence than himself to his room and besought them to awaken others to prayer and effort for the conversion of those around them. His earnestness was used of God, and a deeply spiritual movement was the result.
From the period of the Civil War to the visits of D. L. Moody the control of the voluntary religious life of the University was passing more and more into the hands of the students themselves. Christian work by students for students, in time became centered in the Y.M.C.A., under whose auspices several revivals of more recent date had taken place, including that of 1900, when John R. Mott and Robert E. Speer were so powerfully used of God that no fewer than a hundred undergraduates professed conversion.
Five years later, with a new generation of students, there was need for all the prayer and effort centered at Dwight Hall, into which Borden wholeheartedly entered. John Magee, now a missionary at Nanking, was the Graduate Secretary, and it was not long before he discerned the intense reality behind the young freshman’s spiritual life and convictions.
“The school is not a knowledge shop so much as a great assay of human souls,” Professor Meigs of “The Hill” had written. Borden, at Yale, was being tested in that great assay, and was conscious of the same process in the lives of others. All around him it was going on―men making or marring their future. To him the Word of God meant so much in meeting the temptations of daily life and he was finding such strength in the companionship of the Lord Jesus Christ that he longed to share these great realities with others. So the purpose was forming in his heart of attempting to start a group for Bible study among those who would not avail themselves of the influences of Dwight Hall. The intimate correspondence with his mother continued:
SUNDAY, October 15, 1905
Just after chapel service this morning we had our class prayer meeting at which several of us spoke on the possibilities of the year. John Magee invited me to come to the Volunteer Band at five this afternoon. There were about ten present and we had a very nice little meeting and time of prayer. There are some fine fellows here in the upper classes, I can tell you.
I have talked over the matter of my group Bible Study Class with Arthur Bradford and decided that paraphrasing Galatians is a little too strenuous for the sort of men to be reached. The object of these groups is to interest fellows who do not attend the Wednesday evening meeting in Dwight Hall, led by Dr. Wright. So I have been looking over methods of Bible study suggested by Dr. Torrey and decided upon Chapter Study as the best. You know the method, giving out questions to be answered. And I think John is the book to take, because it is written that men might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, “and that believing ye might have life through his name.” I haven’t spoken to the fellows yet but expect to do so this evening.
October 20, 1905
Am I busy? I will tell you what I am doing, and you can judge for yourself. To begin with I have twelve recitations a week to prepare, which isn’t much, very little in fact.
Monday evening at 6:45, Freshman Religious Committee meets in Bill Barnes’ room, Vice-President of Dwight Hall.
Wednesday evening at 6:40, the 1909 Bible Class meets in Dwight Hall, led by Dr. Wright.
Thursday evening at 6:45, our Mission Study Class meets. Herbert Malcolm, a member of the Volunteer Band, 1907 man, leads this.
And then Sunday. That day starts with Chapel at 10:30. Immediately after this comes our Class Prayer Meeting with which I have more or less to do and will probably lead at times. At five in the afternoon there is a meeting of the Volunteer Band, and at 6:40 a general meeting held in Dwight Hall. The preacher of the morning usually addresses this.
Besides these things, I intend to go down at least twice a week to the Oak Street Boy’s Club.
Then I have been appointed chairman of a committee to promote interest and collect funds for the Yale Hall work here in New Haven and the Yale Mission in China....
My exercise, that is football, takes rather more time than I wish it did....
I spoke to M. H. tonight about starting up a class in Bible Study. I approached him first as he is the key, so to speak, of a certain bunch of fellows I want to get at. He thought it would be a very good thing and said he would consider it. If possible I would like to have a first sort of explanatory meeting next Sunday. But I have my doubts about accomplishing this. However, a beginning has been made, for which I am thankful.
Please send me Dr. Torrey’s Vest Pocket Companion for Christian Workers, best text for personal use. I have lost mine.
It was at one of those many meetings in Dwight Hall that Borden met his friend, the one who more than any other was to share his college life. Of that first meeting and his own impressions, Charlie Campbell wrote:
We were crowded together in Bill Barnes’ room. Barnes was a junior at the time, Vice-President of the Y.M.C.A., and leader of the freshman religious work. Bill Borden was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up near his chin. I remember noticing him particularly. As we left the meeting he joined me and we walked back together to York Street. Bill told me then, as I remember, of his trip around the world and of his interest in missions. This was the beginning of the friendship which has meant so much to me.
About the early days of our acquaintance I would like to say a little, as they show one of Bill’s finest characteristics, real democracy. I lived in freshman year in Pierson Hall, the one college-owned dormitory on York Street and not considered so swell as the private-owned dormitories. I not only lived in Pierson, but away up on the fifth floor. Anyone had to have courage to climb to the top of Pierson. My first impulse after meeting Bill and seeing his room at Garland’s was to hold aloof. I felt he was too well off, and imagined he would not care to have much to do with me. How appreciative I felt and how drawn to Bill when I found him climbing up those Pierson steps, not once but often! And what times we would have! There was always the religious bond that drew us together; but Bill’s spirit of fun was sure to show itself, and a good “rough-house” or game was in order. I think of one evening when we staged a complete track meet in my room and Bill was the heavy competitor in all the events possible.
During this fall [1905] Bill went out for the freshman football team, and played very good ball. He did not make the team but came very near doing so. In fact in the game with Princeton freshmen he was told to warm up to go in, but time was called or something of that sort prevented.
It was well on in the first term when Bill and I began to pray together in the morning before breakfast. I cannot say positively whose suggestion it was, but I feel sure it must have originated with Bill. We had been meeting only a short time when a third, Farrand Williams, joined us and soon after a fourth, James M. Howard. These meetings were held in Bill’s room just before we went to breakfast. The time was spent in prayer after a brief reading of Scripture. Our object was to pray for the religious work of the class and college, and also for those of our friends we were seeking to bring to Christ. I remember so well the stimulus Bill gave us in those meetings. His handling of Scripture was always helpful. From the very beginning of the years I knew him he would read to us from the Bible, show us something that God had promised and then proceed to claim the promise with assurance.
This group for prayer was the beginning of the daily groups that spread to every one of the college classes. From the membership of two at the start, the group in our class grew until it had to be divided in sophomore year, and by the end of that year there were similar groups in each of the classes. It was not passed down from the seniors to the juniors, but came up from the freshmen to the seniors. And very real blessing was given in answer to our prayers―quite a number were converted. I remember one with whom Bill worked very hard, a fellow with a scientific turn of mind who wanted everything proved. Bill must have looked down with joy from the Place to which he has gone when, some years later, this man came out brightly as a Christian.
Bill was always picking out the toughest proposition and going through thick and thin to win him for Christ.... His life, how true it rang! He came to college far ahead, spiritually, of any of us. He had already given his heart in full surrender to Christ―had really done it. He had formed his purpose to become a foreign missionary, and all through college and seminary that purpose never wavered. One can easily see the advantage this would give a man. His life was determined. We who were his classmates learned to lean on him and find in him a strength that was solid as a rock, just because of this settled purpose and consecration.
Unconsciously the young freshman was becoming a force in the best life of the University, but so unconsciously! To himself it seemed quite otherwise. One cannot but notice, in the letters to his mother of that fall and winter, the earnestness with which he was seeking to overcome inconsistencies and weaknesses.
October 29, 1905
My group work has not commenced yet, but I hope to get it going before long, by the end of the football season. Mr. Mott was here last Sunday and I had a few moments’ talk with him in the afternoon. He wished to be remembered to you. This Sunday also he was here and gave us a couple of very fine talks―this morning on the required characteristics of leadership and this evening in Dwight Hall, a distinctly evangelistic meeting, something rather unusual for this place. Mr. Mott spoke very strongly on Sin, especially on “Be sure your sin will find you out.” After his time was up he asked the fellows who wanted to learn how to deal with temptation to meet in another room. So we met, only about two-fifths having left, and there again he spoke very earnestly....
YALE UNIVERSITY
Branford Court Memorial Quadrangle
The following Sundays brought a different experience. A preacher with an international reputation led the services, but to an earnest mind grappling with the realities of life left much to be desired.
November 12, 1905
Dr.― has been here for the last two Sundays, preaching in Chapel and talking in Dwight Hall in the evenings. He makes me tired, he’s so smooth and subtle and pleasing to everyone. His talks are interesting in a way, but what he says merely amounts to human ethics. He takes texts simply “as pegs to hang his own thoughts on.”
Perhaps the preacher did not realize what that hour might mean, as he faced the serried ranks in the college chapel. Had he had the vision of what lay behind in those hundreds upon hundreds of lives, the temptations and dangers, possibilities and needs, he surely would have wanted to give them more than just eloquence and ethics. Borden was having his own struggles.
December 3, 1905
I am at present a little discouraged about my Bible Class... I find it very difficult to get started somehow, and am a little afraid of what may happen when it is started. There is a great deal to be done here and I don’t feel that I am doing much of anything.
I am sorry to say that I don’t even manage to keep up my own Bible study systematically, without breaks. I keep it up for a week or so, and then something happens and I miss a day.
In my opinion we get the saddest bunch of preachers you could scrape up in the U.S.A., and today we had one from Scotland who almost takes the cake. I think I’ll live at the Moody Institute when I get back to Chicago. But seriously, I will go with you whenever there’s anything to go to. You know I won’t be going to dances, so I’ll have lots of time.
The Christmas vacation was evidently a time when his armor was buckled on afresh, and he came back determined to put first things first in a new way.
January 14, 1906
It seems sort of nice and very natural to be back here again. I am thankful to say that I have been enabled to get up every morning, so far, in time to have Bible study and prayer before beginning the day’s work. I hope with God’s help to keep it up....
The term has started well as far as sermons go. Mr. Speer was here this morning and evening and gave us two very good talks. In the morning he read a part of the tenth of Matthew, taking as his text verses 32 and 33, the subject being “Confession and Denial.” He spoke on character as essential to strong manhood, and religion as necessary to character, and showed that religion―Christianity―is a question of personal attitude toward Jesus Christ. It is confession or―denial.
The Dwight Hall meeting as you know is voluntary, but the room was packed, some fellows even standing, a thing they wouldn’t think of doing in Chapel. I guess there were about five hundred present. There, too, he gave a very powerful talk on “Apart from me ye can do nothing,” and “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
I have a regular night now for going to the Boys’ Club. I go down every Saturday with Charlie Campbell. He is a corker, and I am glad I’m getting to know him.
This afternoon I had quite a time. I thought I’d study up the question of procrastination. So I did, and as a result I felt that it was up to me to go and speak to B. B. about Bible study. Well, I went to his room about quarter of four and he was reading a magazine. I tried to start the subject and couldn’t seem to get up courage. I sat there for a solid hour scarcely saying a word and didn’t accomplish anything. I had a Mission Band meeting at five, so I had to go, but I got B. to walk along with me, as he was going that way, towards Dwight Hall, thinking I might speak to him on the way. I didn’t, however.
Ned Harvey led the Band Meeting and gave us a very good talk from Phil. 1:6, 96Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: (Philippians 1:6)
9And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; (Philippians 1:9) and 10. When he was through he asked as usual whether there was anything special to be brought up. I immediately thought of that verse in James, “Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another.” I felt that I ought to confess. For a moment I hesitated, but I was given strength to do so, thank God. I read the verse and said that I knew that I must learn to save people here before I could hope to do so anywhere else, and that I had had a good chance this afternoon to speak to a fellow and had failed, and that I wanted their prayers. I just managed to get this out before I was overcome with emotion and sat down. This evening I had another chance at B. and finally managed to get on the track by a roundabout way, still cowardly and fearful! The result is that B. has said he will study with me. We haven’t arranged the details, but I have more confidence and faith that through Christ I can carry out what is begun. Phil. 1:66Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: (Philippians 1:6), “Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Get the Church to pray for me. I’ve only “begun.” And you may be sure I am praying for you, dear Mother, who have done so much for me and for each member of our dear family.
Another letter affords a glimpse into a very different side of college life. The week of the annual “Promenade” had come, and many of the students had visitors.
January 21, 1906
Chapel this morning was chuck full of Prom girls, naturally, and also full of fellows, as many as could get in, who came to “rubber.” Mr. Speer preached a good sermon on distinctions between right and wrong. After the service, according to college custom, the sophs all lined up outside and made remarks about the girls as they came out, and yelled! It wasn’t exactly a Sunday performance.
However, we had a very nice little prayer meeting, fairly well attended. The subject was Sabbath Observance. Various subjects, studying, traveling, playing games, etc., were brought up. Finally one of the fellows got up and reminded us of what Mr. Speer had just said—that if there was any doubt about a thing, it was pretty sure to be wrong, and it was best to give it a wide margin. It seemed to me that that just about hit the nail on the head....
You probably know that fellows, a good many, go to the theater and then afterward go around and “pick up” chorus girls and usually come home drunk about one a.m. Well, one of the leaders of this sort of thing made rather elaborate plans for a spree. He invited a good many fellows, about thirty out of our class, each to chip in five dollars. The plan was to take the whole chorus of the play, the one that was here last night, and drive out to some dance hall and have a high old time. The way I learned of it was this―another fellow was asked who wouldn’t go, and he came and told me, to see what we could do to stop it. He had been informed that they would have about ninety dollars’ worth of punch. However, that’s a mere detail. I didn’t know any of the fellows at all well who were going, so couldn’t do much. However, we saw a good many of the upper classmen, and the result was it didn’t come off, for which I am very thankful. This is, of course, an extreme case, but it’s an example of what sometimes happens. I heard someone in the hall, just this minute, say that there would have been about fifty chorus girls and seventy-five fellows.
That he was far from thinking himself better than other people comes out in many letters, but he was growing.
Today hasn’t been just as I would have liked. The morning sermon... was simply “sad.” However, our little prayer meeting was better attended and a better spirit shown in it than ever before. I went off walking in the afternoon. Tried to find Bethany Mission and as we failed, kept on walking and didn’t get back until supper time. Spent the early part of the evening in watching one of the fellows do tricks, and now it’s late and B. is studying. So you see I have been pretty successfully “hindered,” or rather I have allowed myself to be, for I confess I didn’t make much effort, sort of shirked my duty. Oh yes, and I absolutely forgot about our Band Meeting, and missed that.
I don’t know just what’s wrong―but the fact is I’ve failed again. Guess I haven’t fed upon God’s Word enough, not prayed enough. I will try again.
Your loving son,
WILLIAM
January 31, 1906
There is a group of men here in College, it might be called a personal-workers’ group, which meets every Tuesday in Dr. Wright’s room. James Howard, Charlie Campbell and I were chosen from our class. As Dr. Wright says, it doesn’t mean any honor, it means work.... There are about fourteen in the group now. Dr. Wright first reads a short passage and says a few words. Then there is general discussion, each one bringing up his case, and then prayer. It is fine. We get to know some of the best men in college intimately. I realize here more than ever before that a man’s true friends are his Christian friends.... I am sure these little gatherings will be a help to me and will accomplish great things here at Yale.
February 18, 1906
I have only missed my Morning Watch once or twice this term.... I can easily believe that it is next in importance to accepting Christ. For I know that when I don’t wait upon God in prayer and Bible study, things go wrong. The other night I had a fine chance to testify to that very fact, or rather to the fact that when I do pray and study, things go better, and I am sorry to say didn’t make good use of it. I happened to mention to a fellow that I was nearly always up and dressed by 7:30, and knowing that I seldom went to breakfast before 8:00 he wanted to know what I did in the interval. I don’t think I was exactly ashamed or afraid, but I didn’t reply as I should have done. I merely said in a vague way that I attended to certain things. Wasn’t it foolish! I’m afraid it’s one of my great troubles, not explaining myself. I know I’ve gotten into the habit of refusing to do things without saying why I refuse. I suppose the reason is that I feel that it would be like judging the fellows who are doing the thing, whatever it may be. However, in the future I am going to pray that I may be on the lookout for opportunities of confessing my belief and may stand for right against wrong. I’m sorry to say that I have done nothing with B. or any of the other fellows lately....
In our Band Meeting this afternoon, there were only five of us; the point was brought out very strongly that “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it” and “Apart from me ye can do nothing.” We all felt our need of God’s help and the necessity for greater consecration on our part. One of the fellows confessed that he wasn’t wholly consecrated by any means, and I’m afraid I’m not. But I want to be.... Keep praying for me.
“I am keeping up my wrestling,” he wrote to his father about the same time, “and like it very much. It certainly is a science! The last few days I have had to go easy because of a mat burn on my arm―i.e. the skin rubbed off and rather an awkward sore made.”
“Yesterday I wrestled in the tournament and got beaten,” he added a little later. “My class is ‘middle heavy weight.’ My opponent was about a head taller than I am, but the same weight. He is a senior and knows John. We had two bouts of five minutes each, and neither succeeded in putting the other down. So after the rest we went at it again, and this time were to wrestle till one of us was thrown. Well, after forty-nine minutes of rather strenuous exercise he succeeded in getting me down. I lost about three pounds in the process, but did not suffer any injuries and feel fine now.”