A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. AnsonAnson, Adrian C. (Adrian Constantine)
History
A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson
Anson, Adrian C. (Adrian Constantine)
Baseball
There was no sleep for me that night, as you may imagine. I fancied that
the entire Pottawattomie tribe had gathered about the house and that
they would never be content until they had both killed and scalped me. I
just lay there and shivered until the dawn came, and I do not think
there was a happier boy in the country than I when the morning finally
broke and I convinced myself by the evidence of my own eye-sight that
there was not so much as even a single Indian about.
As soon as it was possible I told my father about my two unwelcome
visitors, but the old man only laughed and declared that I had been
dreaming. It was just possible that I had, but I do not believe it. I
saw those two Indians as they stood at the head and foot of my bed just
as plainly as I ever saw a base-ball, and I have had my eye on the ball
a good many times since I first began to play the game. I saw both their
painted faces and the tomahawks that they held in their sinewy hands.
More than that, I heard them as well as saw them when they went out.
That is the reason why I insist that I was not dreaming. I deny the
allegation and defy the alligator!
There were two Indians in my room that night. What they were there for I
don't know, and at this late day I don't care, but they were there, and
I know it. I shall insist that they were there to my dying day, and they
were there!
CHAPTER II. BOYHOOD DAYS AND MEMORIES.
What's in a name? Not much, to be sure, in many of them, but in mine a
good deal, for I represent two Michigan towns and two Roman Emperors,
Adrian and Constantine. My father had evidently not outgrown his liking
for Michigan when I came into the world, and as he was familiar with
both Adrian and Constantine and had many friends in both places he
concluded to keep them fresh in his memory by naming me after them.
I don't think he gave much consideration to the noble old Romans at that
time. In fact, I am inclined to believe that he did not think of them at
all, but nevertheless Adrian Constantine I was christened, and it was as
Adrian Constantine Anson that my name was first entered upon the roll of
the little school at Marshalltown.
I was then in my "smart" years, and what I didn't know about books would
have filled a very large library, and I hadn't the slightest desire to
know any more. In my youthful mind book-knowledge cut but a small, a
very small, figure, and the school house itself was as bad if not worse
than the county jail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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