The old gardener, generally a savage defender of the place, who had no sense of humor as it was exhibited in boy nature, sometimes let the boys rake the dead leaves into great heaps and make bonfires of them, if the wind happened to be in the right direction. And then what larks! The bonfire was a house on fire, and the great garden-roller, a very heavy affair, was “Engine No. 42,” with which the boys ran to put the fire out. They all shouted as loudly and as unnecessarily as real firemen did, in those days; the foreman gave his orders through a real trumpet, and one boy had a real fireman’s hat [p 34]
with “Engine No. 42” on it. He was chief engineer, but he did not run with the machine: not because he was chief engineer, but because while in active motion he could not keep his hat on. It was his father’s hat, and its extraordinary weight was considerably increased by the wads of newspaper packed in the lining to make it fit. The chief engineer held the position for life on the strength of the hat, which he would not lend to anybody else. The rest of the officers of the company were elected, viva voce, every time there was a fire.
This entertainment came to an end, like everything else, when the gardener chained the roller to the tool-house, after Bob Stuart fell under the machine and was rolled so flat that he had to be carried home on a stretcher, made of overcoats tied together by the sleeves. That is the only recorded instance in which the boys, particularly Bob, left the Park without climbing over. And the bells sounded a “general alarm.” The dent made in the path by Bob’s body was on exhibition until the next snow-storm.
THE CHIEF ENGINEER
The favorite amusements in the Park were shinny, baseball, one-old-cat, and fires. The Columbia Baseball Club was organized in 1853 or 1854. It had nine members, and The Boy was secretary and treasurer. The uniform consisted chiefly of a black leather belt with the initials
in white letters, hand-painted, and generally turned the wrong way. [p 35]
The first base was an ailantus-tree; the second base was another ailantus-tree; the third base was a button-ball-tree; the home base was a marble head-stone, brought for that purpose from an old burying-ground not far away; and “over the fence” was a home-run. A player was caught out on the second bounce, and he was “out” if hit by a ball thrown at him as he ran. The Boy was put out once by a crack on the ear, which put The Boy out very much.
“The Hounds” and “The Rovers” challenged “The Columbias” repeatedly. But that was looked upon simply as an excuse to get into the Park, and the challenges were never accepted. The challengers were forced to content themselves with running off with the balls which went over the fence; an action on their part which made home-runs through that medium very unpopular and very expensive. In the whole history of “The Hounds” and “The Rovers,” nothing that they pirated was ever returned but The Boy’s sled.
Contemporary with the Columbia Baseball Club was a so-called “Mind-cultivating Society,” organized by the undergraduates of McElligott’s School, in Greene Street. The Boy, as usual, was secretary when he was not treasurer. The object was “Debates,” but all the debating was done at the business meetings, and no mind ever became sufficiently [p 36]
cultivated to master the intricacies of parliamentary law. The members called it a Secret Society, and on their jackets they wore, as conspicuously as possible, a badge-pin consisting of a blue enamelled circlet containing Greek letters in gold. In a very short time the badge-pin was all that was left of the Society; but to this day the secret of the Society has never been disclosed. No one ever knew, or will ever know, what the Greek letters stood for—not even the members themselves.