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CASEY AT THE BAT

happy idea for all hands, and he embraced the suggestion.

Archibald Clavering Gunter, author of "Mr. Barnes of New York", "Mr. Potter of Texas", and other great successes of the eighties, saw the announcement and looked up McCaull at once.

"I've got just the thing for your baseball night," Gunter told him. "It's a baseball poem I cut out of a Frisco paper when I was on the Coast last winter. I've been carrying it around ever since. It's a lulu, and young Hopper could do it to a turn."

Gunter had the clipping with him and passed it over. McCaull read it, slapped his knee and agreed. That was a Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday night McCaull gave me the clipping and explained the object. Being quick study I stuck it in my pocket and forgot it. The series between the Sox and the Giants opened on Thursday and I, need it be said, was at the game. Thursday night a telegram from Onset Bay brought me word that my twenty-months-old boy had diphtheritic sore throat and that the crisis would be reached that night.

I was frantic. I slept little that night and early Friday morning found me camping on the

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