What's in a name? Not much, to be sure, in many of them, but in mine a
good deal, for I represent two Michigan towns and two Roman Emperors,
Adrian and Constantine. My father had evidently not outgrown his liking
for Michigan when I came into the world, and as he was familiar with
both Adrian and Constantine and had many friends in both places he
concluded to keep them fresh in his memory by naming me after them.
I don't think he gave much consideration to the noble old Romans at that
time. In fact, I am inclined to believe that he did not think of them at
all, but nevertheless Adrian Constantine I was christened, and it was as
Adrian Constantine Anson that my name was first entered upon the roll of
the little school at Marshalltown.
I was then in my "smart" years, and what I didn't know about books would
have filled a very large library, and I hadn't the slightest desire to
know any more. In my youthful mind book-knowledge cut but a small, a
very small, figure, and the school house itself was as bad if not worse
than the county jail.
The idea of my being cooped up between four walls when the sunbeams were
dancing among the leaves outside and the bees were humming among the
blossoms, seemed to me the acme of cruelty, and every day that I spent
bending over a desk represented to my mind just so many wasted hours and
opportunities. I longed through all the weary hours to be running out
barefoot on the prairies; to be playing soak-ball, bull pen or two old
cat, on one of the vacant lots, or else to be splashing about like a big
Newfoundland dog in the cool waters of Lynn Creek.
About that time my father had considerable business to attend to in
Chicago and was absent from home for days and weeks at a time. You know
the old adage, "When the cat's away," etc.? Well, mouse-like, that was
the time in which I played my hardest. I played hookey day after day,
and though I was often punished for doing so it had but little effect.
Run away from school I would, and run away from school I did until even
the old man became disgusted with the idea of trying to make a scholar
of me.
Sport of any kind, and particularly sport of an outdoor variety, had for
me more attractions than the best book that was ever published. The game
of base-ball was then in its infancy and while it was being played to
some extent to the eastward of us the craze had not as yet reached
Marshalltown. It arrived there later and it struck the town with both
feet, too, when it did come.
"Soak Ball" was at this time my favorite sport. It was a game in which
the batter was put out while running the bases by being hit with the
ball; hence the name. The ball used was a comparatively soft one, yet
hard enough to hurt when hurled by a powerful arm, as many of the
old-timers as well as myself can testify. It was a good exercise,
however, for arms, legs and eyes, and many of the ball players who
acquired fame in the early seventies can lay the fact that they did so
to the experience and training that this rough game gave to them.
So disgusted did my father finally become with the progress of my
education at Marshalltown that he determined upon sending me to the
State University at Iowa City. I was unable to pass the examination
there the first time that I tried it, but later I succeeded and the old
man fondly imagined that I was at last on the high road to wealth, at
least so far as book-knowledge would carry me.
But, alas, for his hopes in that direction! I was not a whit better as a
student at Iowa City than I had been at home. I was as wild as a mustang
and as tough as a pine knot, and the scrapes that I managed to get into
were too numerous to mention. The State University finally became too
small to hold me and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, then noted
as being one of the strictest schools in the country, was selected as
being the proper place for "breaking me into harness," providing that
the said "breaking in" performance could be successfully accomplished
anywhere.
To Notre Dame I went and if I acquired any honors in the way of
scholarships during the brief time that I was there I have never heard
of them. Foot-ball, base-ball and fancy skating engrossed the most of my
attention, and in all of these branches of sport I attained at least a
college reputation. As a fancy skater I excelled, and there were few
boys of my age anywhere in the country that could beat me in that line.
The base-ball team that represented Notre Dame at that time was the
Juanitas, and of this organization I was a member, playing second base.
The bright particular star of this club was my brother Sturgis, who
played the center field position. Had he remained in the business he
would certainly have made his mark in the profession, but unfortunately
he strained his arm one day while playing and was obliged to quit the
diamond. He is now a successful business man in the old town and
properly thankful that a fate that then seemed most unkind kept him from
becoming a professional ball player.
Looking back over my youthful experiences I marvel that I have ever
lived to relate them, and that I did not receive at least a hundred
thrashings for every one that was given me. I know now that I fully
deserved all that I received, and more, too. My father was certainly in
those days a most patient man. I have recorded the fact elsewhere that I
was as averse to work as I was to study, and I had a way of avoiding it
at times that was peculiarly my own.
While I was still a boy in Marshalltown and before I had graduated (?)
from either the State University or the college of Notre Dame, my father
kept a hotel known as the Anson House. The old gentleman was at that
tune the possessor of a silver watch, and to own that watch was the
height of my ambition. Time and again I begged him to give it to me, but
he had turned a deaf ear to my importunities.
In the back yard of the hotel one day when I had been begging him for
the gift harder than usual, there stood a huge pile of wood that needed
splitting, and looking at this he remarked, that I could earn the watch
if I chose by doing the task. He was about to take a journey at the time
and I asked him if he really meant it. He replied that he did, and
started away.
I don't think he had any more idea of my doing the task than he had of
my flying. I had some ideas of my own on the subject, however, and he
was scarcely out of sight before I began to put them into execution. The
larder of the hotel was well stocked, and cookies and doughnuts were as
good a currency as gold and silver among boys of my acquaintance. This
being the case it dawned upon my mind that I could sublet the contract,
a plan than I was not long in putting into practice.
Many hands make quick work, and it was not long before I had a little
army of boys at work demolishing that wood pile. The chunks that were
too big and hard to split we placed on the bottom, then placed the split
wood over them. The task was accomplished long before the old
gentleman's return, and when on the night of his arrival I took him out
and showed him that such was the case he looked a bit astonished. He
handed over the watch, though, and for some days afterwards as I
strutted about town with it in my pocket I fancied it was as big as the
town clock and wondered that everybody that I met in my travels did not
stop to ask me the time of day.
It was some time afterwards that my father discovered that the job had
been shirked by me, and paid for with the cakes and cookies taken from
his own larder, but it was then too late to say anything and I guess, if
the truth were known, he chuckled to himself over the manner in which
lie had been outwitted.
The old gentleman seldom became very angry with me, no matter what sort
of a scrape I might have gotten into, and the only time that he really
gave me a good dressing down that I remember was when I had traded
during his absence from home his prize gun for a Llewellyn setter. When
he returned and found what I had done he was as mad as a hornet, but
quieted down after I had told him that he had better go hunting with her
before making so much fuss. This he did and was so pleased with the
dog's behavior that he forgave me for the trick that I had played him.
That the dog was worth more than the gun, the sequel proved.
A man by the name of Dwight who lived down in the bottoms had given his
boy instructions to kill a black-and-tan dog if he found it in the
vicinity of his sheep. The lad, who did not know one dog from another,
killed the setter and then the old gentleman boiled over again. He
demanded pay for the dog, which was refused. Then he sued, and a jury
awarded him damages to the amount of two hundred dollars, all of which
goes to prove that I was even then a pretty good judge of dogs, although
I had not been blessed with a bench show experience.
I may state right here that my father and I were more like a couple of
chums at school together than like father and son. We fished together,
shot together, played ball together, poker together and I regret to say
that we fought together. In the early days I got rather the worst of
these arguments, but later on I managed to hold my own and sometimes to
get even a shade the better of it.
The old gentleman was an athlete of no mean ability. He was a crack
shot, a good ball player and a man that could play a game of billiards
that in those days was regarded as something wonderful for an amateur.
My love of sport, therefore, came to me naturally. I inherited it, and
if I have excelled in any particular branch it is because of my father's
teachings. He was a square sport, and one that had no use for anything
that savored of crookedness. There was nothing whatever of the Puritan
in his makeup, and from my early youth he allowed me to participate in
any sort of game that took my fancy. He had no idea at that time of my
ever becoming a professional. Neither had I. There were but few
professional sports outside of the gamblers, and even these few led a
most precarious existence.
I was quite an expert at billiards long before I was ever heard of as a
ball player. There was a billiard table in the old Anson House and it
was upon that that I practiced when I was scarcely large enough to
handle a cue. It was rather a primitive piece of furniture, but it
answered the purpose for which it had been designed. It was one of the
old six pocket affairs, with a bass-wood bed instead of slate, and the
balls sometimes went wabbling over it very much the same fashion as eggs
would roll if pushed about on a kitchen table with a broomstick. In
spite of having to use such poor tools I soon became quite proficient at
the game and many a poor drummer was taken into camp by the long, gawky
country lad at Marshalltown, whose backers were always looking about for
a chance to make some easy money.
Next to base-ball, billiards was at that time my favorite sport and
there was not an hour in the day that I was not willing to leave
anything that I might be engaged upon to take a hand in either one of
these games.
When it came to weeding a garden or hoeing a field of corn I was not to
be relied upon, but at laying out a ball, ground I was a whole team. The
public square at Marshalltown, the land for which had been donated, by
my father, struck me as being an ideal place to play ball in. There were
too many trees growing there, however, to make it available for the
purpose. I had made up my mind to turn it into a ball ground in spite
of this, and shouldering an ax one fine morning I started in.
How long it took me to accomplish the purpose I had in view I have
forgotten, but I know that I succeeded finely in getting the timber all
out of the way. It was hard work, but you see the base-ball fever was on
me and that treeless park for many a long day after was a spot hat I
took great pride in.
At the present time it is shaded by stately elms, while, almost in the
center of its velvet lawn, flanked by cannon, stands a handsome stone
courthouse that is the pride of Marshall County.
Then it was ankle deep in meadow grass and surrounded by a low picket
fence over which the ball was often batted, both by members of the home
team and by their visitors from abroad.
Many a broken window in Main Street the Anson family were responsible
for in those days, but as all the owners of stores on that thoroughfare
in the immediate vicinity of the grounds were base-ball enthusiasts,
broken windows counted for but little so long as Marshalltown carried
off the honors.