ayed hookey day after day,
and though I was often punished for doing so it had but little effect.
Run away from school I would, and run away from school I did until even
the old man became disgusted with the idea of trying to make a scholar
of me.

Sport of any kind, and particularly sport of an outdoor variety, had for
me more attractions than the best book that was ever published. The game
of base-ball was then in its infancy and while it was being played to
some extent to the eastward of us the craze had not as yet reached
Marshalltown. It arrived there later and it struck the town with both
feet, too, when it did come.

"Soak Ball" was at this time my favorite sport. It was a game in which
the batter was put out while running the bases by being hit with the
ball; hence the name. The ball used was a comparatively soft one, yet
hard enough to hurt when hurled by a powerful arm, as many of the
old-timers as well as myself can testify. It was a good exercise,
however, for arms, legs and eyes, and many of the ball players who
acquired fame in the early seventies can lay the fact that they did so
to the experience and training that this rough game gave to them.

So disgusted did my father finally become with the progress of my
education at Marshalltown that he determined upon sending me to the
State University at Iowa City. I was unable to pass the examination
there the first time that I tried it, but later I succeeded and the old
man fondly imagined that I was at last on the high road to wealth, at
least so far as book-knowledge would carry me.

But, alas, for his hopes in that direction! I was not a whit better as a
student at Iowa City than I had been at home. I was as wild as a mustang
and as tough as a pine knot, and the scrapes that I managed to get into
were too numerous to mention. The State University finally became too
small to hold me and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, then noted
as being one of the strictest schools in the country, was selected as
being the proper place for "breaking me into harness," providing that
the said "breaking in" performance could be successfully accomplished
anywhere.

To Notre Dame I went and if I acquired any honors in the way of
scholarships during the brief time that I was there I have never heard
of them. Foot-ball, base-ball and fancy skating engrossed the most of my
attention, and in all of these branches of sport I attained at least a
college reputation. As a