Blitz was travelling the
country, giving his necromantic shows, and left behind him everywhere a
taste for his wonderful performances. Our ingenuity was exercised in
weaving watch chains in various patterns with silk twist; in making
handsome bats for ball, and in making the balls themselves with the
ravelled yarn of old stockings, winding it over a bit of rubber, and in
sewing on a cover of fine thin calf skin. This ball did not kill as it
struck one, and, instead of being thrown to the man on the base, was
more usually thrown at the man running between them. He who could make a
good shot of that kind was much applauded, and he who was hit was
laughed at and felt very sheepish. That was true sport, plenty of fun
and excitement, yet not too serious and severe. The issue of the game
was talked over for a week. I did my daily stint of stitching with only
one thing in mind, to play ball when through; for the boys played every
afternoon. When there was to be an important match game the men
practised after the day's work was done.

Meanwhile my education was entirely neglected. I attended no school at
this time, either summer or winter, and came as near acquiring a trade
as I have ever done. In fact I longed to be able to make the whole of a
boot, to last, peg, trim, gum, blackball and stone it, all processes of
the craft as then practised. But how does one know when he is learning?
I was laying up a good store of things more valuable than any in books,
whilst the free life I led was preparing in me the soft and
impressionable tablets on which could be traced future experiences and
acquisitions of a more intellectual kind. Tomorrow would come and this
was its preparation. Yet not consciously can one prepare for it all that
it is to hold. I became a graduate of the shops of the bootmakers before
acquiring the whole of their trade, but not before absorbing most of
that which constituted the overflow of their lives. I began to imitate
the manners and conversation of men. Ridiculed for this, I retreated
into myself and became more observant and more silent. A small, very dim
yet new light appeared to me--reflection, silent thoughts at night, and
when alone; questionings with no least effort at answers. My new world
as yet was not much more than a mile square, as in my native town;
within that mile I knew every natural object and all the people.
Everybody called me by my first name, prefixing, usually, "little curly"
or "snub-nos