Henry James on Eliot on "a curved ball"

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

I will be happy to send to ADS-list members upon request a searchable
PDF of the article below about Harvard President Eliot. The size is
about 12.7 megabytes. Extra pages are included in the PDF to show the
month, volume, and magazine title.

There exists a ProQuest archive with the following coverage: "The
Atlantic Monthly archive includes the text of articles from November,
1857 - December, 1963 and from October, 1992 - present." But I do not
have access to this archive. The PDF was created by scanning from
paper. Text in the gutter is readable, but the OCR sometimes fails in
the gutter. "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at
the stars."

Cite: 1929 November, The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 144, As Seen By a
Disciple: President Eliot by Le Baron Russell Briggs, Start Page 588,
Quote Page 599 and 600, The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston.
(Verified on paper)

Garson

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:58 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Henry James on Eliot on "a curved ball"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here is an excerpt from the Atlantic article mentioning "a feint to
> throw a ball in one direction and then throwing it in ANOTHER!"
>
> Cite: 1929 November, The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 144, As Seen By a
> Disciple: President Eliot by Le Baron Russell Briggs, Start Page 588,
> Quote Page 599 and 600, The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston.
> (Verified on paper)
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> At a Faculty meeting the President had
> been commenting on the shabbiness of
> the University baseball team, which
> was undeniable. Finally he spoke of
> one man in the team who was, he said, a
> Special Student in the Law School, but
> never attended his classes. 'The students,'
> he added, like him because he
> is "up to all the professional tricks."'
> After the meeting, Barrett Wendell and
> I went to Mr. Eliot, saying in effect:
> 'We know little about that player and
> care little about him; but we have seen
> him play ball many times, and have
> never seen him do anything mean or
> dirty.' The President drew himself up
> in the magnificent attitude that was
> all his own and exclaimed with triumphant
> finality, 'Why! They boasted of
> his making a feint to throw a ball in
> one direction and then throwing it in
> ANOTHER!' He was superb. It was as if
> he said, 'You young men don't know
> what you are talking about,' yet said it
> with regal courtesy. Still again, he
> maintained that the manly way to play
> football is to attack the strongest part
> of the opponent's line.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 5:15 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: Henry James on Eliot on "a curved ball"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> I got the following from the underground at the Harvard
>> Archives.  The page of the James biography has been discussed here
>> before, but I don['t think anyone has tried to follow up the sources
>> the (mole?) says James cites.
>>
>>>         In his 1930 biography of Charles W. Eliot (volume 2, page
>>> 69), Henry James relays the story of Eliot's disdain for the
>>> pitcher who delivers a curve ball.
>>>
>>>         James cites an October 9, 1883 speech to the Harvard Club
>>> of San Francisco and an Atlantic Monthly article (LeBaron Russell
>>> Briggs, November 1929:  600) as his sources.  A quick look at our
>>> holdings has found neither of these sources, although you are
>>> welcome to visit the Archives to conduct a more thorough search in
>>> Eliot's personal papers, presidential records and biographical materials.
>>
>> Joel
>>
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>
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