The hired players of to-day are no more players than mercenary troops are patriots. They are bought and sold on the open market, and have no pride of home and no town reputation to maintain. Neither I nor any of my companions could any more have played a game of base-ball with Hartford against Farmington than we could have joined a foreign army and fought against the United States. And we would have scorned to hire mercenaries from any other town. We were not only playing ball, but we were fighting for the glory and honor of Farmington. Neither had the game sunk to any such ignoble state that we were paid for our services. We played ball; we did not work at the trade of amusing people,—we had something else to do. There was school in the spring and autumn months; there were the grist-mill, the blacksmith-shop, and the farms in the summer-time, and only Saturday afternoons were reserved for ball, excepting such practice as we might get in the long summer twilight hours. We literally left our callings on the day we played ball,—left them as Cincinnatus left his plough in the furrow and rode off to war in obedience to his country’s call. At school we scarcely took time to eat our pie or cake and cheese, but crammed them into our mouths, snatched the bat, and hurried to the ball-grounds, swallowing our luncheon in great gulps as we went along. At recess we played until the last tones of the little bell had died away, and the teacher with exhausted patience had shut the door and gone back to her desk; then we dropped the clubs and hurried in. When school was out, we went home for our suppers and to do our few small chores, and then rushed off to the public square to get all the practice that we could. Well do I remember one summer Saturday afternoon long years ago,—how long, I cannot say, but I could find the date if I dared to look it up. The almanacs, when we got the new ones at the store about Christmas, had told us that there would be an almost total eclipse of the sun that year. The people far and near looked for the eventful day. As I recall, some wise astronomers hired a special ship and sailed down to the equator to make observations which they could not make at home. We children smoked little bits of glass over a lighted candle, that we might look through the blackened glass straight at the dazzling sun.