Mr. Noah H. Swayne, Manager Y. U. B. B. C., New Haven, Conn.

DEAR SIR:

Your favor of April 25th is at hand. As we understand your position you object to a possible third game after Commencement Day because it is difficult to keep your players together after the close of the academic year. This does not seem to us a sufficient reason for declining our proposal.

In the first place there was nothing novel in that proposal. The Yale and, Harvard nines have repeatedly played off a tie after Commencement Day. Indeed until Yale declined last year to follow the uniform precedents of twenty years, no question was ever raised as to the propriety of an arrangement like that proposed by us. Nor do we see how it could be more difficult for your nine to play ball as late as the Thursday or the Saturday of Commencement week than it is for your crew to row on Friday of that week.

Finally, whatever difficulty there may be, falls equally on both nines and is indeed, of your own making. If you had seen fit to play the New Haven game in May or earlier in June instead of the last week in that month as we suggested at our conference, the tie game might easily have been played before vacation. We should not and do not take any exception to the date you have chosen for the New Haven game. But, on the other hand, since it is your selection of so late a date as Tuesday, June 27th, that throws the possible tie game into the vacation, it does not seem to us just for you to make that selection a reason for declining to play off the tie in the manner customary among sportsmen.

You have proposed as an alternate plan that we play three games, whether the first two result in a tie or not, and that the first of these games be played on neutral ground, the second at Cambridge, and the third at New Haven. Such a plan is, we believe, unprecedented in the annals of sport. The objections to it are obvious. If either university wins the first two games, there is no occasion for a third game unless we are to play ball for gate receipts only. If on the other hand the first two game result in a tie, by your plan, the tie game would be played at New Haven or on your Commencement Day, so that the natural advantage of playing on your own grounds would be increased to the highest point by the multitude of Yale men among the spectators. Surely if one game of the three is to be played on neutral ground it ought in fairness to be the tie game.

But not withstanding our conviction of the reasonableness of our position since it does not commend itself to you, and since you must desire as strongly as we do to avoid the fruitless outcome of last year's games, we propose to you to refer the decision as between your plan and ours to two graduates, one from Harvard, to be chosen by us, and one from Harvard, to be named by you. In case the two graduates so chosen cannot agree, they shall choose a third person, not a graduate of either University, to act with them, and the decision of the majority shall be final.

Hoping for an early and favoorable reply, I am

Yours sincerely

(Signed)

LEWIS D. HILL.M'g'r. H. U. B. C.366 Harvard St., Cambridge, Mass.