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$. Chris LastiDe is-working for J. P. Jensen this week. Max Zinkey is improving bis front porch this week. |j John Eagen and niece, Eva.' Eagen a were Audubon caliera Tuesday.

I' Bob Clark is ^^rliig sheep for Marion Jones aud Slen 8cott this week. I Art Lastine arid ^Ati itcteras Were iVisitois in Exira Saturday ^evening.

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How was lodging boys? J. P. Jensen had a bad runaway

la9t Friday with the corn planter and harrow, the harrow passing over ir Mr. Jensen bruising him quite bad t, about the head and body. He is get? i? ting along as well as could be expected.

Mies Edith Pindell spent Sunday with her parents. 5PS Mrs. Campbell foil and hart her arm one day last week.

George Eagen and family spent Sunday at Lou Moore's. Earl LaFoy is helping his broth-

y.

er-in-law, Mr. John Blake. Rib.

John Blake spent Monday

afternoon at Sam Dutlcr's. ,ii Albert and Alburn Johnson spent ^Sunday at the Bill Parmer home.

Hermie Hukill and family spent Sunday at the Hank Loyd home. Mrs. George Eagen went down to •ee Hrs. DuValV Monday forenoon. I it-Mrs. Frank Dayall has been very siek and is nnderthe doctor's care. •'i

Miss Myra Bull was a jailer at

|f^- the Sam Dutler home Tuesday afternoon. Will Griffith's little daughter got her leg broken Monday. We did not learn how it happened. She is in a .'o serious oondition.

Case after case of new and nobby Spring Oxfords are being received daily at this store—A monster line to select from, representing the popular styles and desirable leathers. This line is adapted specially to the young men's trade and we extend a special invitation to investigate new spring models.

$3.50,...$4.00....$4.50...,$5.00

New Silk Hosiery for spring. .50c Nobby Neck Wear, attractive 1 creations. 50c

Harry and Kay Moon spent Sunday afternoon at the Sam Dutler home.

Harry Moon has quit working for John Blake aiid will work for Frank D'avall.

John Blake and wife spent Sunday with her parents, Charlie LaFoy and wife. I'1"'*

h- T-+

Mr. and Mrs. Bert Feeney are the proud, parents of a newly born babe last Thursday.

Jack Tunman went with Orn Cofifman to Coon Rapids Saturday evening in their car.

Miss Edna Buddy eame home Wednesday from Ootinoil Bluffs where she had been for an operation.

r-:

Orn Oollee gave a dance last Saturday evening." All had a very nice time only the rain stopped the people from going home so early.

•f•:: Painful Accident

Mr. Gorden McCoy met with a very serious accident last Friday afternoon. While running after some hogs he stumbled and fell in some hazel-brash, running a piece clear

ting along nicely at this writing.

ONE MILLION AUTOS

They Are Here

The New Century Leverless Riding Cultivator. It is Springless and Self Balancing. The best piece of machinery ever taken into a cornfield for the cultivation of corn. You will have to try it out, to say so too.

We also keep the old stand bys, the Avery and the Deere. They have been in your field so long that you know them. They are no experiment in Aududubon County.

Then, we handle The Blue Ribbon Cultivator so famous throughout Iowa for its easiness to handle its superiority in its work. It's one of the best. In fact we keep nothing else.

In Hay Loaders, we have the New Deere, Gejirless and Hawkeye These machines are the best on the market and when you purchase either one, you will have the satisfaction of knowing there is nothing better.

Were Registered For Taxation Parposes la 13 States That Have Rea ported. That's Some Auto.

Nearly 1,000,000 autos were registeied in the Capitols of the various states since May first. New York leads with 70,000 Pennsylvania and California come next with 40,000 each Other States having more than 10,000 each are Ohio 32,400^ Illinois 30,000 Iowa 21,000 Massachusetts 22,000, Michigan 18,059 New Jersey 17,000 Missouri 15.600 Nebraska 15,200 Indiana 15,000 Wisconsin 14,000 Kanais 12,300 Minnesota 11,900 Connecticit 11,000.

FOLEYV KIDNEY) PILLS

FOR RHEUMATISM KIDNEYS AMD •LADDER

For twenty-five years, they have been trying to find a mower that is better than the McCormick, Deering, or Dane, but it has not been done.

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EXIRA, IOWA

through his hand. JHe was taken to tKO ddfStor. immediately: Ho isget-*- •thfng'4n' the story, for one of my two

1

'Copyright, 1911, by the McCIura NewspaPgr Syndicate in Great Britain and Canada. All rights reserved.)

CHAPTER I.

I Begin to Play Ball.

When I began to play ball—I nave a fairy good memory, but I am not going to mention the date—it would .have been considered foolish for any follower of the game to sit down.and write its history, especially if he had the nerve to begin every other sentence with a great big "I." Perhaps the situation hasn't changed a great deal as to the use of the personal pronoun, but in respect to the game it is mighty different ball has made history since that day and it's time somebody woke up and tackled it.

I'll say right here, though, that I shouldn't have attempted the feat In the form of an autobiography had it not been for Just one thing—it has been my fate to be so mixed up with the development of baseball in America for the past 40 years or more that It wouldn't be an easy trick to disentangle me. That is why I am writing this story as if the hero of it all were Adrian Constantino Anson.

Funny combination, that name— ain't it? Makes you think of some of the old Roman emperors in the school histories. One day when there was no game I got a volume out of the public library and hunted up both my namesakes. To be frank with you, neither one of them made a hit with me. I am told that my mother had another name ail ready for me, but my father —usually the easi&st proposition in the Anson family—got up and rooted for Adrian Constantine until everybody was glad to let him win. I never knew exactly how It was that father was so set on that, combination until I read a newspaper account to the effect that the old gentleman was so in love with the state of Michigan that he named me after the two towns of that state in which he had lived. The writer of that article took occasion to congratulate me that the combination hadn't happened to be Ypsilantl Kalamazoo, and I couldn't help agreeing with him. There may have been some-

brothers was named Sturgis,- which suggests another Michigan town. I don't know that I should bother with the matter of pedigree—although most of the autobiographers I have come across seem to make a big feature of such things—if it wasn't for the fact that ever since I began to figure tn the papers in connection with baseball some of them have been trying to make a Swede out of me. Now I want to say right here that I have

ASEDAIL A Hbfory of the Greaf National Game

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... LOTS OF EXERCISE AMD PLENTY 7^ OF fXOTEMEMT.

nothing against the Swedes those I have come up against size up mighty well in the shuffle. They have done a big stunt in the development of the middle northwest and If I happened to be one of them I shouldn't have kicked over the fact.

It's kind of risky business, though, this pedigree question. I found that out one day when I called on the editor of a Philadelphia newspaper to ask him how he happened to call me a Swede in print. "Well, captain, ain't you?" hetasked, looking me square in the face.

I toid hijp that, BO far as I knew, there wasn't drop of Swedish blood in my carcass that my ancestors way back as far as anybody had cared to go were English, and that some member of my family that cared a darn sight more about such things than I did had (Traced our genealogy back as far as Lord Anson, an English landed proprietor of considerable note.

If you think that settled it, you have another guess coming. "My dear Captain Anson," he said, with a sort of pitying smile, "I do not see from your own account that you have disproved yqur Swedish ancestry. On the contrary, I should say that you have strengthened its probability. The old

Scandinavian stock Is so securely en­

AC. ANSON fdnner/fymgrr offfre

Chicago jYatio/ta/ League 7eam

grafted on the English ancestral tree that It would be exceedingly rash to disclaim it."

Just the same, what that sporting editor said doesn't alter the fact that the Ansons came from England and so did the Rices, my mother's family. And eventually our branch of the family got as far west as central Iowa.

In 1852 central Iowa was pretty close to the frontier. What is now the thriving little city of Marshalltown existed only in the imagination of my father, who laid it off into town lots and proceeded to boom it to the best of his ability. It was mighty slow work for a long time, but finally the crowd headed that way. I was right at the head of the procession, being the first white child born in the new city, and in a log cabin at that. I shall always regard that as one of the biggest honors ever coming my way.

By the time I was big enough to sit on a bench in the little red schoolhouse that was Marshalltown's only •eat of learning in those early days the fortunes of the Anson family were at the high water mark. Father sold off a number of plots and business sites and we moved out of our log cabin into a fair-sized house in the new metropolis of Marshall county. With the money that he got from the sale of town lots father built a planing mill and later a hotel, the Anson house, and for a time we prospered for fair. Later, things took a turn for the worse and for a while we seemed to be on the wrong side of prosperity.

But don't you believe for a minute that hard luck put the damper on the high spirits of the Anson family. Father was not built that way, nor was either of his three sons, especially the on£ he had dubbed Adrian Constantine. I suppose it must have been due In part to the good health we enjoyed: but in my case the neighbors gave the credit to the gentleman of whom we speak only when we are a little excited.

I certainly was an active specimen of the rough and tumble variety of kid, and from the first day I found myself at the little red schoolhouse I made up my mind that going to school did. not appeal to me, and the longer I went the stronger my conviction that I was not cut out for a scholar. I was ready to admit that learning was a fine thing for some folks, but I didn't Include myself among the latter bunch, and I found the enforced confinement about the most disagreeable thing I was up against. For that reason I always appreciated the holidays, and I added many to my calendar that were not observed by anybody else.

Did I ever play ball in those days? Well, rather. If there was any species of ball game that I didn't play It was because It was so new that it hadn't reached that part of Iowa. As I look back it seems to me' that pretty nearly everything got Interested in had to do with ball In some shape or other. Of course, the game of baseball as it is played nowadays hadn't been developed, but there were several other games played with ball and bat, and with ball alone, that were good enough to occupy a good deal of my attention. One of these, called "anty-over" in our part of the country, I considered mighty good sport. Any number of boys—we never asked the girls to Join us unless we couldn't raise a quorum among ourselves—could play it, the more the merrier. Two leaders were appointed and they proceeded to choose sides. The teams then stationed themselves one on each side of some building, and the player with the ball tossed it over tha roof, at the same time yelling at the top of his voice, "Anty-over!" If the ball was caught by any player on the opposite side as It came rolling down the shingles, it became the catcher's privilege to sneak around the corner of the building and sock some man belonging to the other side. If he succeeded in doing this to the satisfaction of everybody—excepting, of course, the fellow who got the ball in the neck or some other sensitive spot—the man hit had to change sides. I don't know whether or not this game is still among the living, but if It Isn't there's a good thing gone out of the world. There was lots of exercise tn It and plenty of excitement. When the expected "Anty-over!" didn't come and there was a' suspicious silence everybody on the other side held his breath in anticipation of. a possible socking.

Then there was the old cat family of ball—one old cat, two old cat, etc. I used to regard two old cat as a mighty scientific game in those days, and the only fault it had In my eyes was that the girls would play it In spite of the risk of being dubbed tomboys. I did my Bhare in discouraging them, but rather than not play ball I was sometimes driven to let a girl or two into the game. As soon as another boy put in his appearance, though, she had to go. Although I have modified my views somewhat, in those days I was a firm believer in the physical Inferiority of the other sex.

Soek ball—"soak ball" we used to call It—had its turn a little later, and it made a big hit with us. It was a good, strenuous outdoor pastimes and, although the socking that was the main feature of it used to decorate our hides with more or less black and blue spots, I never heard of any one being killed outright. At first the ball used by us was a comparatively soft one, homemade always, and covered with sections cut from an old bootleg. In time we seemed to hanker after something harder, and I hit on the scheme of winding the yarn of which the inside of the ball was made over a chunk of lead. A sock of that, ball never failed to make an impression.

CHAPTER II.

I Am Initiated Into Baseball. At the time when was a school lad I knew nothing at all about baseball. The game was in its infancy and had not yet reached Marshalltown. After a while rumors of a new game of ball that was making quite a stir In the eastern part of the country-began to find their way into our remote neighborhood, but we didn't stop playing sock ball long enough to pay much attention to them.

We were getting lots of outdoor exercise and muscular training from our rough game, a very good preparation for what was coming. Our town was growing rapidly and new arrivals from the east brought the news that baseball was becoming epidemic east of the Allegheny mountains and had already passed over into Ohio and Michigan. It seemed likely that it would break out in Iowa before long, but I was loyal to the old favorite until the very last.

One day 1 spied a crowd of boys and men In a vacant lot that belonged to my father and I didn't lose any time in joining the assemblage. A colony of New York state families had arrived in town a few days before that and some of the boys were playing a game of baseball, suoh a novelty in Marshalltown that the crowd had gathered to watch it. It was probably as crude a game of baseball as has ever been played In America, but it struck us sock ball players all In a heap, espe-

IT WAS the 5UBJ£CT OF Mr DRFAMS.

daily me. Bad as it was, I grasped its possibilities right then and there and made up my mind that thereafter for me sock ball was out of the running.

When I got home I found that father and my brother Sturgis, who was two years my senior and mighty handy with the ball, had also been witnesses of the game and were about as enthusiastic over it as myself. In fact, this awkwarj squad from New York state had Inoculated the whole town—in less than a month the baseball craze broke out like spring measles in an orphan asylum. I don't mind telling you that I got the biggest dose of all, a dose from which I have never recovered, and probably never shall.

It didn't take the Anson family long to pick up what there was to be learned about the game of baseball aa it was played at that time. For my part, I made it my chief business by day, and it was the subject of my dreams when I slept. Father and Sturgis were almost as devoted to it as myself, but after a while the old gentleman "came back" long enough to realize that I was loading up my system with baseball to the exclusion of everything else. Although he had not absorbed enough book lore In his early day to fit him for a college professor, he vowed he wouldn't have his sons grow up to be a couple of numskulls, and he called us In one day to have a serious talk. "I don't believe you boys can figure long division," he began as a cheerful Introduction. "I can," declared Sturgis promptly. "It"s no trick at all for me." "How about you, Adrian?" he continued, fixing me with a look that I knew meant business.

I squirmed a little, but it was no use. I knew perfectly well that I couldn't do an example in long division to save my hide, and I also knew better than to put up any claim that I couldn't make good. 8o it was decreed that we should start right in and prepare ourselves to enter the State university. It was not a job to my liking, but I saw no way to escape it. I got out my books and soon found that my taste hadn't developed any since I laid them down. All that summer I put up a mild bluff over the book problem, but I took mighty good care that the baseball feature of my education shouldn't be neglected.

At the entrance examinations that fall the Anson boys were conspicuous only for what they didn't know. If the fellows who got up those question papers had been hired especially to select a list of subjects thai had never

come within the range ofr the Ansoni family they couldn't have done a better job. As a result we escaped goingi to the State university by a big margin.

I don't mind telling you that we were tickled to death over the outs-1 come, but our rejoicing was soonf turned into fresh trouble. Father made up his mind that we should have some* sort of an education even If the Statei university didn't take kindly to the scheme. So he sent us to Notre Dame university, at South Bend, Ind., an Institution that had a reputation of being able to instruct boys when all other attempts had failed. When we wer« made acquainted with the plan we felt that everything was over with us w» had heard of Notre Dame and tho methods in vogue there, and we believed that no Anson could thrive under such treatment. If we had been starting for the reformatory on that day when we bade goodby to Marshalltown and baseball, we couldn't hava been more depressed.

Contrary to our expectations, w® found the Indiana school very much to wr liking. About the first thing thafc was asked us on our arrival waa whether we played ball, and when my brother, who acted as the Anson spokesman, confessed to a mild fondness for the sport, we were given tha glad hand ail around and taken into full fellowship with the other boys. After a day or two we were given a chance to show what we could do, and* our performance was so good that wa soon became two of the most popular boys in the school. Naturally we began to think we had made a greab mistake in our opinion of Notre Dame.

We really put in a very happy winter at school. There were lakes in tha vicinity and the skating was mighty fine. We were expected to do a reasonable amount of studying, but w« were encouraged to take as much outdoor exercise as we could get, and 6 always filled the bill nobly in that respect. I don't mind telling you that didn't astonish anybody with scholarship that winter, but I stood A* No. 1 with the fellows, especially those who liked play better than books. Both Sturgis and myself were glveft places on the university nine, and we certaintly got good marks for our work In that direction, even if those we received in our classes were not quite satisfactory.

When we returned home the following June Marshalltown was in a fever of excitement over baseball. Father seemed to be the moving spirit in the craze, and he actually appeared to be more delighted with the progress we had made as members of the Juani^s at Notre Dame than with the flattering report of our attention to business which the good fathers had sent after us. At that time Sturgis played a. slightly better game thau myself, being more speedy between bases and also showing better judgment. Later, however, he strained one of the tendons of his right arm and never afterword recovered good enough use of it to excel in baseball. It was a great blow to him, and to all of us, tor that matter, but he bore it manfully and turned his attention to other things.

That left a clear field for me, and I don't mind telling you that I jumped right in and took possession. Father was so gratified over the fact that his sons had actually gone to school an entire year without being expelled or even suspended that he permitted mo to take my fill of sports, and 1 didn't need very hard urging. I didn't realize it hen, but I know now that tha old gentleman was tickled to death to have some one with whom he could work off a little of -the enthusiasm for sport that was his in spite of his age. He was always ready for a game of almost any kind, and I seldom, If ever, knew him to let business interfere.

And right here, now that I have a chance, I want to say that the founder of Ma«shalltown was an athlete of no ordinary ability. He was a crack shot, a mighty handy man with the ball for those days and a billiard player who was regarded as remarkable by those who came in contact with him. I had learned to play billiards when quite a small boy, having free access to the old-fashioned table In the Anson house whenever it was not otherwise occupied. After a while I got so proficient that not only could I beat the old gentleman nine times out of ten, but could play a better game than any of the traveling men who stopped at the Anson house. In fact, every form of sport came to me naturally I seemed to inherit it. Father was a sport if ever there wae one, and as honest as he was enthusiastic. He was the squarest sport I ever saw, and anything that savored of crookedness met his stern disapproval.

TO BK CONTINUED.

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