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Yale's Answer.

The management of the Base Ball Association has received the following letter from the Yale Base Ball Association:

Mr. J. W. Cummin, Manager H. U. B. B. Club:

DEAR SIR-We beg to acknowledge the receipt of yours of May 1, signed by D. S. Dean, Captain, in which you challenge us to a series of four baseball games.

We must decline your challenge.

We hold an agreement signed also by Capt. Dudley S. Dean, fixing a series of games upon conditions, by which we were willing to abide. We also hold the personal assurance of Captain Dean, before this agreement was signed, that you would arrange a series of games with Princeton. It was upon this assurance that we signed this agreement with you-in fact the representatives of the three colleges met on that basis. Whatever may be your opinion of the correctness at the outset of our attitude in advocation the necessity of a series is now not open for argument. You acceded to it and we are unwilling to reopen the question. You have made agreements which have been annulled by your athletic committee without our consent. We cannot treat with you further.

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You are entirely in error in assuming that the Yale sentiment is opposed to ball games with Harvard. It is just the contrary. But the Yale sentiment is opposed to dictation by the Harvard athletic committee. We consider that we have been trifled with when you send a representative to meet us whom we naturally suppose to know the extent of his authority to act, and to act within his authority.

We cannot permit our agreements with you to be thrown over by the whim of any outside body and then begin anew as if no agreement had been reached. Your suggestion that your athletic committee bears the same relations to your athletic organizations that our faculty does to ours is most surprising, Permit us to inform you that our faculty interferes with our games only so far as they interfere with college exercises. It does not dictate to us as to what college we shall play. It does not attempt to fix our dates nor even to cancel agreements because perchance our nine may not have reached the proper stage of preparation for games.

It interferes with no details of time, place or opponents within the limits above stated.

We beg to suggest that all complications in future years with us will be avoided if you will send representatives who have in fact the authority to bind you that they assume to have.

And further we beg to say that the terms of your present challenge not only would never have been agreeable to us, but our previous negotiations must have made you aware that we would not accede to its terms. It is substantially what we flatly refused in the convention.

Very truly yours,

GOUVERNEUR CALHOUN, Captain Y. U. B. B. A. W. H. ST. JOHN, Manager Y. U. B. B. A.

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