When I broached the subject, I saw at once that it distressed her. She, far better than I, realized what it meant. The commercial aspect of the case, in making use of whatever skill I possessed as a ball player to gain a competence, made her shrink at first. She had looked upon the game as a means of health-giving exercise, and had rejoiced in it. She had followed the early victories of our club, and, like a loyal mother, had gloried in them. But, to make a business of ball playing! That was altogether different; it required consideration; perhaps advice.
Finally, the problem reduced itself—as have so many problems in other Rockford households in the last half century and more—to an appeal to Rockford's Grand Old Man, Hiram H. Waldo, to whom I here pay the homage of man's sincere tribute to man. I held him in honor in the days of my youth. I esteemed him in my early manhood, and now, in my maturer years, I count him as one of the noblest, purest, most unselfish men I have ever known.
Mr. Waldo was at that time, President of the Forest City Club, and yet we laid the severing of my connection with that organization before him, assured that his advice would be fair, honest, unbiased; as, indeed, it proved. I remember well how we received the announcement of the offer made to me to go to Chicago; how we placed before him the situation in all its bearings; how I rather earnestly pleaded the opportunity it presented for my advancement in life. He heard the case quite patiently and then said:
"You know, my boy, that, as a citizen of Rockford, I don't want you to go; and perhaps, as President of the
