get even a shade the better of it.

The old gentleman was an athlete of no mean ability. He was a crack
shot, a good ball player and a man that could play a game of billiards
that in those days was regarded as something wonderful for an amateur.
My love of sport, therefore, came to me naturally. I inherited it, and
if I have excelled in any particular branch it is because of my father's
teachings. He was a square sport, and one that had no use for anything
that savored of crookedness. There was nothing whatever of the Puritan
in his makeup, and from my early youth he allowed me to participate in
any sort of game that took my fancy. He had no idea at that time of my
ever becoming a professional. Neither had I. There were but few
professional sports outside of the gamblers, and even these few led a
most precarious existence.

I was quite an expert at billiards long before I was ever heard of as a
ball player. There was a billiard table in the old Anson House and it
was upon that that I practiced when I was scarcely large enough to
handle a cue. It was rather a primitive piece of furniture, but it
answered the purpose for which it had been designed. It was one of the
old six pocket affairs, with a bass-wood bed instead of slate, and the
balls sometimes went wabbling over it very much the same fashion as eggs
would roll if pushed about on a kitchen table with a broomstick. In
spite of having to use such poor tools I soon became quite proficient at
the game and many a poor drummer was taken into camp by the long, gawky
country lad at Marshalltown, whose backers were always looking about for
a chance to make some easy money.

Next to base-ball, billiards was at that time my favorite sport and
there was not an hour in the day that I was not willing to leave
anything that I might be engaged upon to take a hand in either one of
these games.

When it came to weeding a garden or hoeing a field of corn I was not to
be relied upon, but at laying out a ball, ground I was a whole team. The
public square at Marshalltown, the land for which had been donated, by
my father, struck me as being an ideal place to play ball in. There were
too many trees growing there, however, to make it available for the
purpose. I had made up my mind to turn it into a ball ground in spite
of this, and shouldering an ax one fine morning I started in.

How long it took me to accomplish the purpose I had in view I have
forgotten, but I know that I succee