ded finely in getting the timber all
out of the way. It was hard work, but you see the base-ball fever was on
me and that treeless park for many a long day after was a spot hat I
took great pride in.

At the present time it is shaded by stately elms, while, almost in the
center of its velvet lawn, flanked by cannon, stands a handsome stone
courthouse that is the pride of Marshall County.

Then it was ankle deep in meadow grass and surrounded by a low picket
fence over which the ball was often batted, both by members of the home
team and by their visitors from abroad.

Many a broken window in Main Street the Anson family were responsible
for in those days, but as all the owners of stores on that thoroughfare
in the immediate vicinity of the grounds were base-ball enthusiasts,
broken windows counted for but little so long as Marshalltown carried
off the honors.

CHAPTER III. SOME FACTS ABOUT THE NATIONAL GAME.

Just at what particular time the base-ball fever became epidemic in
Marshalltown it is difficult to say, for the reason that, unfortunately,
all of the records of the game there, together with the trophies
accumulated, were destroyed by a fire that swept the place in 1897, and
that also destroyed all of the files of the newspapers then published
there.

The fever had been raging in the East many years previous to that time,
however, and had gradually worked its way over the mountains and across
the broad prairies until the sport had obtained a foothold in every
little village and hamlet in the land. Before entering further on my
experience it may be well to give here and now a brief history of the
game and its origin.

When and where the game first made its appearance is a matter of great
uncertainty, but the general opinion of the historians seems to be that
by some mysterious process of evolution it developed from the boys' game
of more than a century ago, then known as "one old cat," in which there
was a pitcher, a catcher, and a batter. John M. Ward, a famous base-ball
player in his day, and now a prosperous lawyer in the city of Brooklyn,
and the late Professor Proctor, carried on a controversy through the
columns of the New York newspapers in 1888, the latter claiming that
base-ball was taken from the old English game of "rounders," while Ward
argued that base-ball was evolved from the boys' game, as above stated,
and was distinctly an American game, he plainly proving that it had no
connection w