122 ON THE UPPER ST. JOHN'S. 



leading out of it in any direction, I was 

 unlucky enough to miss it. My melancholy 

 condition was hit off before my eyes in a 

 parable, as it were, by a crowd of young 

 fellows, black and white, whom I found one 

 afternoon in a sand-lot just outside the city, 

 engaged in what was intended for a game 

 of baseball. They were doing their best, 

 certainly they made noise enough ; but cir- 

 cumstances were against them. When the 

 ball came to the ground, from no matter 

 what height or with what impetus, it fell 

 dead in the sand ; if it had been made of 

 solid rubber, it could not have rebounded. 

 " Base-running " was little better than base- 

 walking. " Sliding " was safe, but, by the 

 same token, impossible. Worse yet, at 

 every " foul strike " or " wild throw " the 

 ball was lost, and the barefooted fielders 

 had to pick their way painfully about in the 

 outlying saw-palmetto scrub till they found 

 it. I had never seen our " national game " 

 played under conditions so untoward. None 

 but true patriots would have the heart to try 

 it, I thought, and I meditated writing to 

 Washington, where the quadrennial purifica- 

 tion of the civil service was just then in prog- 



