After the speech was over we went home to supper; and after dark, to the square to see the fireworks. This was a fitting close to a great day. We always noted every stage of preparation. We knew just how they put up the platform, and how they fixed the trough for the sky-rockets. We knew who touched them off, who held the Roman candles, and who started the pin-wheels, and just what they all cost. We sat in wonder and delight while the pin-wheels and Roman candles were going through their performance; but when the sky-rockets were touched off, we watched them until they exploded in the air, and then raced off in the darkness to find the sticks. After the fireworks we slowly went home. Although it had been a long day since we began shooting the anvils in the gray morning, it was hard to see the Fourth actually over. Take it all together, we agreed that the Fourth of July was the best day of all the year. CHAPTER XVIII BASE-BALL My greatest regret at growing old was the fact that I must give up playing ball. Even while I could still play, I began to think how soon it would be when I could no longer take an active part, but must simply stand and watch the game. Somehow base-ball has always seemed to me the only thing in life that came up to my hopes and expectations. And thus it is by Nature’s fatal equation that the sensation that gave me the greatest pleasure has caused me the most regret. So, after all, in the final balance base-ball only averages with the rest. I know that, as a youth, I thought that nothing felt so good as a toothache—after it had stopped. Perhaps the world is so arranged that joys and sorrows balance one another, and the one who has the happiest life feels so much regret in giving it up that he comes out with the same net result as the one who feels pleasure in escaping a world of sorrow and despair. But I meant to tell about my base-ball days. These began so long ago that I do not know the time, but I am sure they commenced as the game began, for base-ball was evolved from our boyish game of “two-old-cat and three-old-cat,” which we played while very young. Since I batted my last ball I have often sat on the bleachers of our great towns to see the game. But base-ball now is not the base-ball of my young days. Of course I would not admit that there are better players now than then, but the game has been brought to such a scientific state that one might as well stand and watch the thumping of some great machine as a modern game of ball. There used to be room for individual merit, for skill, for blunders and mistakes, for chance and luck, and all that goes to make up a game.