The uniform in question was composed of a pair of your linen knickerbockers with a red tape tacked along the outside seam, and a huge six-pointed blue flannel star, each point having a buttonhole whereby it was attached to a button, corresponding, on the breast of your waist. And was there a cap, or did you wear the faithful old straw? Fat Day, you recollect, had a cap upon the front of which was lettered his rank—“Captain.” It seems as though mother made you a cap, as well as the striped trousers and breastplate. The cap was furnished with a tremendously deep vizor of pasteboard, and was formed of four segments, two white and two blue, meeting in the center of the crown.
All in all, the uniform was perfectly satisfactory; it was distinctive, and was surpassed by none of the other three.
Evidently the mothers of five of the North Stars did not attend to business, for their sons played in ordinary citizen’s attire of hats, and of waists and trousers unadorned save by the stains incidental to daily life.
The North Stars must have been employed for a time chiefly in parading about and seeking whom they, as an aggregation, might devour, but as a rule failing, owing to interfering house-and-yard duties, all to report upon any one occasion. The contests had been with “picked nines,” “just for fun” (meaning that there was no sting in defeat), when on a sudden it was breathlessly announced from mouth, to mouth that “the Second-street kids want to play us.”
HEN SCHMIDT
“Come on!” responded, with a single valiant voice, the North Stars.
“We’re goin’ to play a match game next Tuesday,” you gave out, as a bit of important news, at the supper-table.
“That so?” hazarded father, who had been flatteringly interested in your blue star. “Who’s the other nine?”
“The Second-street fellows. Spunk Carey’s captain and—”