Beef on the Hoof

Epicurean delights during the football season are usually rather rare. Thrills of the grandstand, the bands, the crowds, to the old-timer begin to lose their glamour after a succession of years. But occasionally the powers that be introduce a spectacle that causes the 'ardents', and who isn't, to sigh contentedly much the same way that the lover of the inner linings of his constitution sighs for his special cheese or fish paste.

In the class of football Epicurean bites, this afternoon's Texas game is surely a good example. For one reason, due to the depression and other causes, a goodly number of the Harvard football watchers were forced to spend last Saturday afternoon not in the cool and windy Stadium, but in the doorway of some radio shop listening to the strident voices of announcern of the West Point game. There is no doubt that the voices in their natural state caused silvery echoes to gift through the confines of the announcerial box. Amplified, refrequenced, hoarsed, and allowed to join the Freshmen in making the Yard noisy, the effect in a quite different one. But at any rate hungry Harvard football appetite was in a large degree left unsatisfied by its radio diet of last week, and with a coming Harvard eleven to watch in action, no one wants to be left outside. The Longhorns have spent a lot of time preparing for today's clash with the Crimson, the objective of the season for the Southerners. Five hours of practice almost every day since September 10 should have made the Texan eleven a smooth-working machine which might well hope to worry its Crimson opponents.

Texas is here to show off the qualities of the bullish name they bear. Down in the southwest they have showed themselves to be great sportsmen, hard players of great endurance. Why not show the cast a few wrangler's tricks? For Harvard the game will not be a major one, but its importance in the Texas schedule cannot be inconsiderable. A victory over Harvard will be a distinct scalp for the belt of the bovine aggregation, and after coming the breadth of the country to take on the Crimson football men, the ranchers will not fail to offer enough material for the starved digestions of some home loving Cambridge dwellers.

House Football

Harvard's House teams are playing through a green grass stage at the present time, to such an extent, perhaps, that many people educated to the Stadium overlook the distinct pleasures of forming the gallery that fringes an unobtrusive football game, and of shouting to Joe and Bill. For the greatest number of people, the thousands of spectators of the present day game overshadow the sport atmosphere that really is an underlying aim of the whole thing. In the gymnasiums we see with amusement the pictures of some intersectional clash of the nineties, with a handful of people cheering the boys on, helping to bathe Battling Joe's blackened eye, and from time to time helping to organize a little informal cheering. Psychology, it is said, enters a good deal into the play of a modern football game. Whether you believe this doctrine or not, it might not be an afternoon wasted to go out to Soldiers Field and work out your own little experiment in the extent to which the psychological element enters in.

Variety, it is said, is essential to keep one's taste for something keen and sharp. Variety in football watching may do a lot to perk up a jaded appetite, Participation at one of these windy afternoon contests between the diminutive, perhaps, House teams, is fun for all, even if there is fear of getting knocked over by the stakesmen when someone transports the ball on a history-making jaunt. Participation of the present will serve to mould the spirit of the future.