[XXXIII.-MY LAST YEARS ON THE BALL FIELD]
[XXXIV.-IF THIS BE TREASON, MAKE THE MOST OF IT]
[XXXV.—HOW MY WINTERS WERE SPENT]
[XXXVI-WITH THE KNIGHTS OF THE CUE]
[XXXVII-NOT DEAD, BUT SLEEPING]
[CHAPTER I. MY BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTRY.]
The town of Marshalltown, the county seat of Marshall County, in the great State of Iowa, is now a handsome and flourishing place of some thirteen or fourteen thousand inhabitants. I have not had time recently to take the census myself, and so I cannot be expected to certify exactly as to how many men, women and children are contained within the corporate limits.
At the time that I first appeared upon the scene, however, the town was in a decidedly embryonic state, and outside of some half-dozen white families that had squatted there it boasted of no inhabitants save Indians of the Pottawattamie tribe, whose wigwams, or tepees, were scattered here and there upon the prairie and along the banks of the river that then, as now, was not navigable for anything much larger than a flat-bottomed scow.
The first log cabin that was erected in Marshalltown was built by my father, Henry Anson, who is still living, a hale and hearty old man, whose only trouble seems to be, according to his own story, that he is getting too fleshy, and that he finds it more difficult to get about than he used to.