On the ridge above the town of Catalpa stands a huge building known as “The Fair Building.” When the Northern District Agricultural Fair was held in Catalpa, this structure was used for displays of mammoth squashes, women’s handiwork, exhibits of flax, wheat, flour, and the other products of the fertile region of Northern Illinois. Now it was given over to desolation and neglect. The men who had helped to pay for its erection were not willing to signify by tearing it down that they had given up all hope of ever winning back to Catalpa the institution that had moved away up to the northern part of the state. Some of these days, they said, the Fair would come back to Catalpa, and then the building would be ready for the show, as of old.

The promoters of the new baseball club scheme had no difficulty in securing permission for the players to practice in the building. Accordingly, when the leisure days of winter came on, the lads betook themselves to the lonesome and barnlike structure and warmed themselves with the exercise that pitching, catching and running made needful.

“If we had had this old ark built for us,” said Hiram Porter, whose father was one of the Directors of the Agricultural Society, “it couldn’t have been better planned. Suppose we call a ball sent up there where Marm Deyo used to spread out her wonderful bed-quilts a foul ball? And then we might imagine that the lower gallery is full of girls looking on at Larry’s scientific pitching. Gals⁠—gallery; see?” and the boys all laughed at Hiram’s small joke, for their spirits rose as they warmed to their work.

Thither went, also, occasionally, a favored few of the townspeople who were very much waked up now over the work of the Nine that was to be the champion of the region, if not of the State. To such an extent had the men, women and children of Catalpa been aroused by what was going on, that a stranger coming into town and hearing the gossip around the street corners and in the more comfortable stores and shops, would have supposed that Catalpa was devoting itself exclusively to the practice of baseball. It was the dead of winter, and, except a few teams slowly pulling in from the outlying country, with a few farmers in quest of the necessaries of life from the town stores, very little life was visible about the place. Occasionally, a fierce snow storm would sweep over the town, blocking the streets, and cutting it off from all communication except by railroad. The main street would be desolate, and the bridge show only a solitary passenger whom dire necessity brought out in such a cold and wintry gale as the blizzard proved to be.

At such times, however, up in the big Fair Building whose yawning cracks let in the driving snow, and on whose roof the shingles rattled merrily, a party of hardy and stalwart young fellows was sure to be found practicing arduously for the work of the coming summer. Around the hot stoves in the lounging-places, downtown, grown men were talking of baseball, and small boys, hanging eagerly on the outer edges of the groups, drank in with silent intelligence the words of wisdom that dropped from the lips of their elders. For a time, at least, it looked as if nothing would ever be done in that town but to prepare for the baseball season of the next year.

But the winter wore away and the regular industries of the Stone River Valley began to revive. The ice went out of the river with the usual rush, and people wondered, as they always had, if the bridge would stand the pressure of the ice-flood. The roads were once more channels of bottomless mud, and eastern people, whom business errands brought out into that part of the country, sourly berated a country “in which everything depended on the state of the roads.” The blue jays were calling from the treetops and the meadow larks were whistling along the fences. The prairies were gradually growing green, and the low places and hollows where the snow lately lingered became shining pools reflecting the tender blue of the spring sky.

One day, Bill Van Orman, after carefully going over the Agricultural Fair Grounds in company with Al Heaton, reported that it was about time to begin practicing out of doors. For months, the members of the new nine had been wishing for the day to come when they could get out into the open air and put some of their indoor practice into actual work. So, with the assistance of a few of their associates who were not members of the new club, they organized two nines and went to work in earnest.

The long winter had borne its fruit. The talk and gossip of the town had run almost altogether to baseball. There was nobody in Catalpa, unless it was poor old Father Bickerby, who was stone deaf, who had not heard the smallest particulars of the progress of the new nine discussed. Did Larry Boyne make a particularly fine running, one-hand catch in the practice of a winter’s afternoon? It was minutely described that night over a hundred tea-tables in Catalpa. Did Charlie King bewilder everybody, someday, by the dexterity and rapidity of the balls that he delivered, so that even the players, always reluctant to praise each other, applauded him? Sage old men hanging over the open fire in the drug store would say that Charlie King “would warm those Jonesvillers, next summer.”

And, what was of more immediate importance, the financial arrangements necessary to start the club prosperously on its way were perfected while the dull times of a western winter pervaded the town of Catalpa. Judge Howell, himself, with an air of great condescension, headed a list of gentlemen who agreed to give a certain sum to enable the club to carry out their campaign. Others followed the great man of the town, according to their ability. And others, again, pledged themselves to lend any sum that might be required to make up a possible deficiency. But, so many who were able to give outright to what they called “the good cause” came forward with their gifts, there was no chance for any deficiency. Since the outbreak of the war, when everybody was scraping lint, making “comforts” for the soldiers, or marching to the front, there had not been so hot a fever of enthusiasm in Catalpa.

The soldiers of this new campaign were the lusty young heroes up in the Agricultural Fair Grounds who were doing battle, every day, with imaginary foes and making ready to face the real antagonists who could not now be very far off; for the baseball season would open in a few weeks. There was a little jealousy over the choice of a captain. Gradually, the place of each man in the nine had been settled without much debate. As we have seen, the list that Alice Howell had made up, in the privacy of her own solitude, became that which the players finally fixed upon, except that Larry Boyne went to third base and Bill Van Orman took the place of catcher, instead of the positions which the fair Alice had assigned them in her draft of an ideal nine.

Ben Burton was supported for the captaincy of the club by several of the members, all of the new players, except Larry Boyne, being in favor of choosing him. Ben was a warm champion of his own claims to the place. Larry, on the other hand, modestly, but very decidedly, supported Hiram Porter for the post of Captain. He was in every way fit for it, and he and his father had done more for the new club than any others. Besides all that, the Porters held a first-rate social position in Dean County and that would count for something in the organizing of the campaign. The young men considered the withdrawal of Al Heaton, and the cause of his loss to them, and they laughed at the thought. Ben Burton was very savage at the suggestion that his family was not just as good as the Porters. What had family to do with baseball, anyway?

The discussion grew warm, after a while, and Larry and Ben were brought into sharp antagonism. There had been rumors that Larry Boyne had dared to show to Miss Alice Howell some of the little attentions with which the young swains of the region were wont to manifest their admiration for a young lady of their choice. He had even gone so far as to ask her to allow him to drive her to a little dancing party given in Darville, one of the numerous rivals of Catalpa, a little prairie town on the Rush River Railroad, twelve miles distant. Alice, warned by a suggestion from her father, who exhibited a species of panic at the bare idea of the invitation, had declined the young man’s kindly offer, and had stayed at home to murmur at her hard fate. Ben Burton could not seriously cherish a belief that Larry Boyne was “paying attention” to the Judge’s daughter; but he felt that he, somehow, owed him a grudge.

The impending storm, if any really did impend, blew over when it was ascertained by ballot that Hiram Porter was the choice of the club. And Hiram, who was tall, dark, strong, long of limb, handsome and skillful, was accordingly chosen captain of the Catalpa nine. Ben Burton, with some show of generous magnanimity, clapped Hiram on the back and boisterously congratulated him on his having secured the coveted honor of the captaincy. But Larry, with a manly air, said, “You’ll find that all the boys will take orders from you, Hi, with as much cheerfulness as if we were soldiers in the field and you were leading them to battle. Isn’t that so, fellows?”

The rest of the young men noisily and heartily asserted their allegiance to their chief, and the new club began their final preparations for the field with enthusiasm and harmonious goodwill.

By the evening lamp, that night, in Judge Howell’s house, the matter was discussed by the Judge and his daughter. “It is an excellent choice, Alice, my child, don’t you think so?”

“Certainly, papa, but it is not of very great importance, after all, who is captain of the nine. ‘The play’s the thing,’ as Hamlet says; isn’t it Hamlet, papa?”

“I don’t know about that, my little girl, I am somewhat rusty in my Shakespeare; but the play is the thing, I suppose. Nevertheless, since social rank does not go for much in baseball, I should have been glad to see Larry Boyne made the captain of the new nine.”

“Oh, papa, that was not to be thought of. He is a new recruit. Who knows how he may turn out? He may be a secret emissary from Jonesville to throw the game, someday.”

“Bless my life!” cried the Judge, “I never thought of that.”