" Thereupon Harding recalled what some one had
said on a related subject: "Athleticism is rooted in an exaggerated
spirit of intercollegiate rivalry and a publicity run mad."
That night Harding dreamt the following:
_From the Harvard "Crimson" for October 8, 1937:_
"Twenty-five thousand men, women, and children in the Stadium yesterday
broke into a delirium of cheers when the Cambridge team in Early
English Literature won its fourth successive victory over Yale. Both
sides were trained to the minute, however different the methods of the
two head coaches. The Harvard team during the last two weeks had been
put on a course of desultory reading from Bede to the closing of the
theatres by the Puritans in 1642, while Yale had concentrated on the
Elizabethan dramatists and signal practice.
"Harvard won the toss, and Captain Hartley led off with a question on
the mediaeval prototypes of Thomas More's 'Utopia.' Brooks of Yale made
a snappy reply, and by a dashing string of three questions on the
authorship of 'Ralph Roister-Doister,' the sources of Chaucer's
'Nonne's Preeste's Tale,' and the exact site of the Globe Theatre,
carried the fight into the enemy's territory.
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