The Days of a Man D868 



Chicago team, and with that of A. G. Spaulding, 

 leading manufacturer of baseball goods. Sometimes 

 I used to think that my style of hitting bore some 

 resemblance to Anson's, being preferably of 

 "grounders" along the base lines. 



Learning Playing baseball with the boys at "the Creek," I 

 chess amused myself with chess at home. This game I 

 learned by going over the records of Paul Morphy 

 and other champions of the time, as reported in the 

 Philadelphia Press. I thus made some special study 

 of the different recognized openings. In college I 

 became first president of the original Chess Club, 

 and was for much of the time the best player. My 

 greatest weakness lay in failure to convert a tra- 

 ditional opening into an effective attack. After grad- 

 uation I seldom played, as I found the effort quite 

 fatiguing when added to other close mental work. 



In 1866 I began to attend teachers' institutes. At 

 one of these I won a small prize for the best essay on 

 a bouquet of flowers, the basis of my superiority 

 being that I knew each kind by its two names, the 

 common and the scientific. In 1868, while planning 

 to teach school and with a position already engaged 

 at Cold Creek in Allegany County, I went to an 

 institute at Warsaw. There they made up a ball 

 team of which I was selected as first baseman, while 

 my friend, Will Smallwood, a youth of fine wit and 

 large stature, then a college student at home on 

 his vacation, served as pitcher. At one point during 

 a game with the local club, a very high fly being 

 popped up, Smallwood and I both went after it. In 

 A broken a smart collision each was downed ; I myself was led 

 se o ff w ith a broken nose, which, being badly set, has 



n 38 3 



