days:

"I entered the Academy in 1895. In those days athletics were not
encouraged. The average number of cadets was less than 200, and the
entrance age was from 14 to 18--really a boys' school. So when an
occasional college team appeared, they looked like old men to us.

"Match games were usually on Saturday afternoon, and all the cadets
spent the forenoon at sail drill on board the _Wyoming_ in Chesapeake
Bay. I can remember spending four hours racing up and down the top
gallant yard with Stone and Hayward, loosing and furling sail, and then
returning to a roast beef dinner, followed by two 45-minute halves of
football.

"One of our best games, as a rule, was with Johns Hopkins University.
Paul Dashiell, then a Hopkins man, usually managed to smuggle one or
more Poes to Annapolis with his team. We knew it, but at that time we
did not object because we usually beat the Hopkins team.

"Another interesting match was with the Deaf Mutes from Kendall College.
It was a standing joke with us that they too frequently smuggled good
football players who were not mutes. These kept silent during the game
and talked with their hands, but frequently when I tackled one hard and
fell on him, I could hear him cuss under his breath."

M. M. Taylor brings us down to Navy football of the early nineties.

"In my day the principal quality sought was beef. Being embryo sailors
we had to have nautical terms for our signals, and they made our
opponents sit up and take notice. When I played halfback I remember my