Like all boys we took up baseball when we were about eight years old. When we were sixteen or seventeen, and both, of course, on the Wayland team, our pitchers both left town, one to return to military school, the other, a minister's son, to accompany his father to another church. Adin and I were then running the farm, and I decided to coach him to pitch a curve and change pace. So as we were cultivating corn or potatoes with rows three feet apart, we counted off 13 rows (50 feet then being the distance from pitcher to home plate) and kept cultivating at that distance from each other till the horses were covered with lather. Then stopping to rest the nags, I put on my catcher's glove, Adin pulled the ball out of his pocket, and we indulged in a little practice. We did the same at dinner time while the horses were eating, and finally we sprung a surprise on the nine.

As the Dansville boys were looping the ball over the heads of our fielders with a poor substitute pitcher doing his best to keep the hits down, finally the captain asked me what now we should do.

I suggested he get Adin to pitch.

After that, no one got to second base -- not even Jimmy Wadsworth, who was a good hitter and had been borrowed from the Geneseo nine for the occasion.

This was while I was back in Wayland after a year at the normal school in Geneseo which I had entered when I was fifteen in order to prepare for college. My father was taken ill the next year and I had to stay home and run the farm and the produce business. I was home three years, and in that time Adin and I not only played baseball, but built a new house and a warehouse. After that I worked a year at Mt. Morris as a clerk in the D.L. & W. station to earn money enough to go back to Geneseo, having spent all the money my father could spare on the new buildings.