fancy skater I excelled, and there were few
boys of my age anywhere in the country that could beat me in that line.

The base-ball team that represented Notre Dame at that time was the
Juanitas, and of this organization I was a member, playing second base.
The bright particular star of this club was my brother Sturgis, who
played the center field position. Had he remained in the business he
would certainly have made his mark in the profession, but unfortunately
he strained his arm one day while playing and was obliged to quit the
diamond. He is now a successful business man in the old town and
properly thankful that a fate that then seemed most unkind kept him from
becoming a professional ball player.

Looking back over my youthful experiences I marvel that I have ever
lived to relate them, and that I did not receive at least a hundred
thrashings for every one that was given me. I know now that I fully
deserved all that I received, and more, too. My father was certainly in
those days a most patient man. I have recorded the fact elsewhere that I
was as averse to work as I was to study, and I had a way of avoiding it
at times that was peculiarly my own.

While I was still a boy in Marshalltown and before I had graduated (?)
from either the State University or the college of Notre Dame, my father
kept a hotel known as the Anson House. The old gentleman was at that
tune the possessor of a silver watch, and to own that watch was the
height of my ambition. Time and again I begged him to give it to me, but
he had turned a deaf ear to my importunities.

In the back yard of the hotel one day when I had been begging him for
the gift harder than usual, there stood a huge pile of wood that needed
splitting, and looking at this he remarked, that I could earn the watch
if I chose by doing the task. He was about to take a journey at the time
and I asked him if he really meant it. He replied that he did, and
started away.

I don't think he had any more idea of my doing the task than he had of
my flying. I had some ideas of my own on the subject, however, and he
was scarcely out of sight before I began to put them into execution. The
larder of the hotel was well stocked, and cookies and doughnuts were as
good a currency as gold and silver among boys of my acquaintance. This
being the case it dawned upon my mind that I could sublet the contract,
a plan than I was not long in putting into practice.

Many hands make quick work, and i