From the class record, 1885, p.71.
"You have broke his pate with your bowl."
-cymbeline.
The Faculty have taken a notion that they can manage athletics better than the students. The first result of this belief was the bowl fight. After chapel, on the first of February, we went down to the assembly room; everybody seemed Mr. Macawber personified, waiting for something to turn up, and, by no means certain what it was going to be. After singing all the songs we knew, and nothing having turned up, we joined the mingled crowd of "Meds," and "Micks," outside the fence of the new Athletic grounds; we watched them chaff a couple of "cops," push back a street car, the driver, meanwhile, like a true son of Erin, acting on the principle, "When you see a head, hit it;" but still nothing turned up. At last a gate three and a half feet high, and about a foot wide, with a steep icy slope behind, was opened. Through this two thousand people were pushed, to fall flat on their faces, or to be jerked up by some friendly hand. This performance, at first amusing, gets monotonous; still nothing turned up. At last, three hours after we had left chapel, something did turn up--it was a little man with a big head, a pair of big eyeglasses, and, as far as appearances go, a very big opinion of himself. This was our new Professor of Athletics. He looks wisely at the bowl, and then at the stone on which the "Fresh" are to break it, if they can get the chance, gives several orders which nobody seems to have the slightest idea of obeying; the two classes collect at the ends of the grounds; the upper class men go to the high ground around the sides, the "Micks" gather around the combatants, and, four hours after we left chapel the fight begins. For thirteen minutes the Fresh and Soph cover each other with mud instead of gore, the bowl man is gotten into the bowl, and the fight is over.