ds as high
in the estimation of his fellow men, providing that he conducts himself
as a gentleman and not as a loafer, as does the professional man in
other walks of life.

CHAPTER VIII. SOME MINOR DIVERSIONS.

Philadelphia is a good city to live in, at least I found it so, and had
I had my own way I presume that I should still be a resident of the city
that William Penn founded instead of a citizen of Chicago, while had I
had my own way when I left Marshalltown to go into a world I knew but
little about I might never have lived in Philadelphia at all. At that
time I was more than anxious to come to Chicago and did my best to
secure a position with the Chicago Club, of which Tom Foley, the veteran
billiard-room keeper, was then the manager. As he has since informed me,
he was looking at that time for ball players with a reputation, and not
for players who had a reputation yet to make, as was the case with me,
and so he turned my application down with the result that I began my
professional career in Rockford instead of in Chicago, as I had wished
to do. "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good," however, and for the
Providence that took me to Rockford and afterward to the "City of
Brotherly Love," I am at this late day truly thankful, however
displeased I may have been at that time.

I have often consoled myself since then with the reflection that had I
come to Chicago to start my career in 1871, that career might have come
to a sudden end right there and then, and all of my hopes for the future
might have gone up in smoke, for the big fire that blotted out the city
scattered the members of the Chicago Base Ball club far and wide and
left many of them stranded, for the me being at least, on the sands of
adversity.

Shakespeare has said, "There is a Providence that shapes our ends rough
hew them as we will," and it seems to me that the immortal Bard of Avon
must have had my case in mind when he wrote that line, for I can see but
little to complain about thus far in the treatment accorded me by
Providence, though I am willing to admit that there was some pretty
rough hewing to do before I was knocked into any shape at all.

When I began playing ball at Rockford I was just at that age when, in my
estimation, I knew a heap more than did the old man, and that idea had
not been entirely knocked out of my head when I arrived in Philadelphia.
The outdoor life that I had led when a youngster, the constant exercise
tha