The Foot-Ball Burial Services of 1860.

In the private journal of the late John Langdon Sibley, is found a very amusing account of the burial services in honor of the game of foot-ball which was forbidden by the faculty in the year 1860. Below is given that account in Mr. Sibley's own words:

"This evening (Sept. 30, 1860) is the anniversary for the foot-ball fight between freshmen and other under-graduates; but the contest has grown so savage of late years that the faculty voted, July 2, to prohibit the encounter to night, and the undergraduates decided to have a closing service. Accordingly before night one of the express wagons was seen carrying a drum which was left at the end of the Cambridge Common. After tea the Delta and its vicinity was not thronged, as usual on the first Monday evening, with students in their most ragged attire and with spectators. But erelong the sound of a drum was heard, and soon a procession appeared, at the head of which was a drum-major or grand marshal with a huge bearskin cap and baton, accompanied by assistants with craped staff and torches, and followed by two bass-drummers (students beating muffled drums); the elegist or chaplain, with his Oxford cap and black gown, and brows and cheeks crocked so as to appear as if wearing huge goggles; four spade-bearers; six pall bearers with a six foot coffin on their shoulders; and then the sophomore class in full ranks. They looked poverty-stricken; their hats, with the rims torn off or turned in, bore the figures '63 in front, that being the year of their class, their apparel such as is suited to the tearing foot-ball fight, and their left leg having crape on them. The procession moved on in perfectly good order to the Delta, and halted under the trees towards the upper end, where a circle was formed and the coffin passed around for the friends to take a last look at the contents, - simply a foot-ball with painted frill fastened in the head of the coffin; while the spade-bearers plied their spades industriously in digging the grave. The elegist then - in the most excessively mock-sanctimonious manner, amid sighs and sobs and groans and lamentations which might have been heard for a mile, read an address and a poem." The address was a very amusing eulogy on the character and merits of the dearly beloved and highly respected game. After the address the gifted speaker read a poem in honor of the deceased, which was an excellent parody on the "Burial of Sir John Moore."

The coffin was then lowered into the grave, which the sextons filled, and at the head was placed the following epitaph in white letters on a black board:

Hic jacet

FOOTBALL FIGHTUM

Obiit July 2, 1860

AEt. LX. years

Resurgat

On the foot-piece the words

"IN MEMORIAM"

were inscribed over a winged skull.

A funeral dirge was then sung to the doleful tune of Auld Lang Syne, and then with cheers for the various classes and groans for the faculty, the meeting broke up.