



Produced by ellinora, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                          WHEN YOU WERE A BOY




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                      [Illustration: Frontispiece]




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                WHEN YOU
                               WERE A BOY

                                   BY
                             EDWIN L. SABIN

                            WITH PICTURES BY
                          FREDERIC DORR STEELE

              -------------------------------------------

                         [Illustration: Figure]

              -------------------------------------------

                                New York
                       THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
              33-37 EAST 17TH STREET, UNION SQUARE (NORTH)




------------------------------------------------------------------------




             Copyright, 1905, by THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY

                                  ---

                        Published October, 1905




                The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




------------------------------------------------------------------------




             For permission to republish the following
             sketches the author is gratefully indebted
             to the Century Magazine, the Saturday Evening
             Post, Everybody’s Magazine, and the National
             Magazine.




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                CONTENTS

                                   ❦


                                                  PAGE
                     I The Match Game               11
                    II You at School                39
                   III Chums                        65
                    IV In the Arena                 91
                     V The Circus                  111
                    VI When You Ran Away           135
                   VII Goin’ Fishin’               155
                  VIII In Society                  179
                    IX Middleton’s Hill            195
                     X Goin’ Swimmin’              219
                    XI The Sunday-School Picnic    239
                   XII The Old Muzzle-Loader       257
                  XIII A Boy’s Loves               277
                   XIV Noon                        297




------------------------------------------------------------------------





                             THE MATCH GAME




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                         [Illustration: “YOU”]




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          WHEN YOU WERE A BOY




                             THE MATCH GAME


      “OUR” NINE

    Billy Lunt, c
    Fat Day, p
    Hen Schmidt, 1b
    Bob Leslie, 2b
    Hod O’Shea, 3b
    Chub Thornbury, ss
    Nixie Kemp, lf
    Tom Kemp, rf
    “You,” cf.

    “THEIR” NINE

    Spunk Carey, c
    Doc Kennedy, p
    Screw Major, 1b
    Ted Watson, 2b
    Red Conroy, 3b
    Slim Harding, ss
    Pete Jones, lf
    Tug McCormack, rf
    Ollie Hansen, cf

                       We:     5   9   9    8—31
                       They:  11  14   9   16—50


FAT DAY was captain and pitcher. He was captain because, if he was
_not_, he wouldn’t play, and inasmuch as he owned the ball, this would
have been disastrous; and he was pitcher because he was captain.

In the North Stars were other pitchers—seven of them! The only member
who did not aspire to pitch was Billy Lunt, and as catcher he occupied a
place, in “takin’ ’em off the bat,” too delightfully hazardous for him
to surrender, and too painful for anybody else to covet.


[Illustration: FAT DAY]


The organization of the North Stars was effected through verbal
contracts somewhat as follows:

“Say, we want you to be in our nine.”

“All right. Will you lemme pitch?”

“Naw; Fat’s pitcher, ’cause he’s captain; but you can play first.”

“Pooh! _Fat_ can’t pitch—”

“I can, too. I can pitch lots better’n _you_ can, anyhow.” (This from
Fat himself.)

“W-well, I’ll play first, then. I don’t care.”

Thus an adjustment was reached.

A proud moment for you was it when _your_ merits as a ball-player were
recognized, and you were engaged for center-field. Of course, secretly
you nourished the strong conviction that you were cut out for a pitcher.
Next to pitcher, you preferred short-stop, and next to short-stop, first
base. But these positions, and pretty much everything, in fact, had been
preempted; so, after the necessary haggling, you accepted center-field.

Speedily the North Star make-up was complete, and disappointed
applicants—those too little, too big, too late, or not good enough—were
busy sneering about it.


[Illustration: BILLY LUNT]


The equipment of the North Star Base-Ball Club consisted of Fat’s
“regular league” ball, six bats (owned by various members, and in some
cases exercising no small influence in determining fitness of the same
for enlistment as recruits), and four uniforms.

Mother made your uniform. To-day you wonder how, amidst darning your
stockings and patching our trousers and mending your waists, she ever
found time in which to supply you with the additional regalia which,
according to your pursuits of the hour, day after day you insistently
demanded. But she always did.


[Illustration: SPUNK CAREY]


The uniform in question was composed of a pair of your linen
knickerbockers with a red tape tacked along the outside seam, and a huge
six-pointed blue flannel star, each point having a buttonhole whereby it
was attached to a button, corresponding, on the breast of your waist.
And was there a cap, or did you wear the faithful old straw? Fat Day,
you recollect, had a cap upon the front of which was lettered his
rank—“Captain.” It seems as though mother made you a cap, as well as the
striped trousers and breastplate. The cap was furnished with a
tremendously deep vizor of pasteboard, and was formed of four segments,
two white and two blue, meeting in the center of the crown.

All in all, the uniform was perfectly satisfactory; it was distinctive,
and was surpassed by none of the other three.

Evidently the mothers of five of the North Stars did not attend to
business, for their sons played in ordinary citizen’s attire of hats,
and of waists and trousers unadorned save by the stains incidental to
daily life.

The North Stars must have been employed for a time chiefly in parading
about and seeking whom they, as an aggregation, might devour, but as a
rule failing, owing to interfering house-and-yard duties, all to report
upon any one occasion. The contests had been with “picked nines,” “just
for fun” (meaning that there was no sting in defeat), when on a sudden
it was breathlessly announced from mouth, to mouth that “the
Second-street kids want to play us.”


[Illustration: HEN SCHMIDT]


“Come on!” responded, with a single valiant voice, the North Stars.

“We’re goin’ to play a match game next Tuesday,” you gave out, as a bit
of important news, at the supper-table.

“That so?” hazarded father, who had been flatteringly interested in your
blue star. “Who’s the other nine?”

“The Second-street fellows. Spunk Carey’s captain and—”

“Who is _Spunk_ Carey? Oh, Johnny, what outlandish names you boys do
rake up!” exclaimed mother.

“Why, he’s Frank Carey the hardware man’s boy,” explained father,
indulgently. “What’s his first name, John?”


[Illustration: CHUB THORNBURY]


“I dunno,” you hurriedly owned; “Spunk” had been quite sufficient for
all purposes. “But we’re goin’ to play in the vacant lot next to Carey’s
house. There’s a dandy diamond.”

So there was. The Carey side fence supplied a fine back-stop, and thence
the grounds extended in a superb level of dusty green, broken by burdock
clumps and interspersed with tin cans. The lot was bounded on the east
by the Carey fence, on the south and west by a high walk, and on the
north by the alley. It was a corner lot, which made it the more
spacious.

The diamond itself had been laid out, in the beginning, with proportions
accommodated to a pair of rocks that would answer for first and second
base; a slab dropped where third ought to be, and another dropped for
the home plate, finished the preliminary work, and thereafter scores of
running feet, shod and unshod, had worn bare the lines, and the spots
where stood pitcher, catcher, and batter.

A landscape architect might have passed criticism on the ensemble of the
plat, and a surveyor might have taken exceptions to the configuration of
the diamond, but who cared?


[Illustration: DOC KENNEDY]


“We” had promised that “we” would be there, ready to play, at two
o’clock, and “they” had solemnly vowed that “they” would be as prompt.
Tuesday’s dinner you gulped and gobbled; in those days your stomach was
patient and charitable almost beyond belief in this degenerate present.
It was imperative that you be at Carey’s lot immediately, and despite
the imploring objections of the family to your reckless haste, you
bolted out; and as you went you drew upon your left hand an old
fingerless kid glove, which was of some peculiar service in your
center-field duties.


[Illustration: RED CONROY]


Your uniform had been put on upon arising that morning. You always wore
it nowadays except when in bed or on Sundays. It was your toga of the
purple border, and the bat that you carried from early to late, in your
peregrinations, was your scepter mace.

At your unearthly yodel, from next door rushed out your crony, Hen
Schmidt, and joined you; and upon your way to the vacant lot you picked
up Billy Lunt and Chub Thornbury.

The four of you succeeded in all talking at once: the Second-streets
were great big fellows; their pitcher was Doc Kennedy and it wasn’t
fair, because he threw as hard as he could, and he was nearly sixteen;
Hop Hopkins said he’d be “empire”; Red Conroy was going to play, and he
always was wanting to fight; darn it—if Fat only wouldn’t pitch, but let
somebody else do it! Bob Leslie could throw an awful big “in,” etc.

The fateful lot dawned upon the right, around the corner of an alley
fence. Hurrah, there they are! You see Nixie and Tom Kemp, and Hod
O’Shea, and Bob Leslie, and Spunk, and Screw Major, and Ted Watson, and
Slim Harding, and the redoubtable Red Conroy (engaged in bullying a
smaller boy), and others who