"Oh, Philip," she sighed ecstatically, "isn't it a fine thing that you're a Yale man?"

"The finest thing in the world," he cried. --Tales of Frank Merriwell, Tip Top Weekly

It was not an especially fine thing to be a Yale man in New Haven last weekend. Roliss Holmes Purrington '73 spent the major part of Saturday afternoon on his back somewhere in the Yale end of the Bowl, to great huzzas from the Harvard side of the Stadium. This was not quite what he had been led to believe would happen to someone who wore Brian Dowling's old football jersey.

It was even less comfortable to be Champagne Chuck Stewart '69. Stewart and a very blonde girl had driven all the way from Golf, Illinois to be present for the highlight of the New Haven social season, and it was highly unrewarding for him to stand at the bar, deep in the bowels of the DKE fraternity house, and write out a check for a hundred dollars.

The girl, visibly troubled, asked the Harvard man whose name was on the check if he wouldn't tear it up so she and Champagne Chuck could eat next week. The Harvard man, who is not a gallant person, wasn't buying any of it. In the old days, when his roommate B. D. was quarterbacking the Yale varsity. Stewart never lost grocery money to anyone.

For a man from Cambridge, however, it was an agreeably light afternoon. Many of them who usually find it entirely unacceptable to even pass through New Haven on the way to New York and points south were there, and they were thoroughly enjoying themselves. Important men, too. Men like mayor Al Vellucci and thirty-five of his traveling cronies, ABC football commentator John Yovicsin, and newborn political kingpin Larry S. DiCara '71.

"One of the prettiest things in a pretty world is the privileged class enjoying their privileges," said Roger Angell '42, as Harvard was scoring its twenty-eighth point a short distance away. But George Plimpton '48, who had spent several long afternoons in the Bowl in previous years, was uneasy. "Where's all the pain, all the suffering?" he asked.

This was unlike the old days. No coach, not even Percy Haughton, had beaten Yale and had a winning season in his first year in Cambridge. Yovicsin had lost 54-0 in his first effort.

But here in New Haven, Harvard men were doing allegedly the most important thing they would ever do in their lives, and they were doing it perfectly. The Restic system, which had not yet been executed as well as the Crimson would have liked, was reaching fruition. Offensively, Harvard was smooth and powerful. On defense, it was aggressive and grudging. It was an extremely satisfying exhibition of what is a revolutionary philosophy of football at Cambridge. And best of all, quarterback Eric Crone '73, stayed out of his own end zone.

"It would have been hard to do again anyway," he reportedly said Saturday night. "Most of the afternoon it was eighty yards away."