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- 
