the exception of the opening statement that a returning soldier told me about playing the game in the army, there is hardly enough truth in the balance of the story on which to hang a feather. It was emphatically not true that I, at thirteen years of age, organized two Base Ball teams. On the contrary, I was at that time an overgrown, unbaked, country boy, as green as the verdant prairies of my native State, and so bashful that I was almost afraid to go out of doors, lest I should meet and be spoken to by someone not a member of my family.
I was boarding at the home of a relative at Rockford. It was my first prolonged absence from home, and memories of the homesickness of that period haunt me like a nightmare to this hour. The only solace I had, the only bright skies for me in those dark days of utter loneliness, were when I could go out to the commons to watch the other fellows play Base Ball. And then my diffidence was so great that I would go way down the outfield, take a seat on the turf and watch the boys have fun. I think no mother, parted from her young, ever had a stronger yearning to see her beloved offspring than had I to break in to those crude games of ball on the commons at Rockford. Oh, if I only could get in! But I'd rather have died than suggest such a thing, and the players were too busy to think of me. So I would sit, and watch, and yearn, and covet a place among the happy lads who were having such happy times.
One day the unexpected happened. The balls used in those days were composed of melted rubber, around which yarn was wound and a leather cover sewed on sometimes. These balls would bound as high as a house and
