The Hoosier School-boy

Jack Amusing the Small Boys with Stories of Hunting, Fishing, and Frontier Adventure. 44 “Cousin Sukey,” Said Little Columbus, “I Want to Ask a Favor of You.” 120 Bob Holliday Carries Home His Friend. 258 THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-BOY THE NEW SCHOLAR While the larger boys in the village school of Greenbank were having a game of “three old cat” before school-time, there appeared on the playground a strange boy, carrying two books, a slate, and an atlas under his arm. He was evidently from the country, for he wore a suit of brown jeans, or woollen homespun, made up in the natural color of the “black” sheep, as we call it. He shyly sidled up to the school-house door, and looked doubtfully at the boys who were playing; watching the familiar game as though he had never seen it before. The boys who had the “paddles” were standing on three bases, while three others stood each behind a base and tossed the ball around the triangle from one hole or base to another. The new-comer soon perceived that, if one with a paddle, or bat, struck at the ball and missed it, and the ball was caught directly, or “at the first bounce,” he gave up his bat to the one who had “caught him out.” When the ball was struck, it was called a “tick,” and when there was a tick, all the batters were obliged to run one base to the left, and then the ball thrown between a batter and the base to which he was running “crossed him out,” and obliged him to give up his “paddle” to the one who threw the ball. “Four old cat,” “two old cat,” and “five old cat” are, as everybody knows, played in the same way, the number of bases or holes increasing with the addition of each pair of players. It is probable that the game was once—some hundreds of years ago, maybe—called “three hole catch,” and that the name was gradually corrupted into “three hole cat,” as it is still called in the interior States, and then became changed by mistake to “three old cat.” It is, no doubt, an early form of our present game of base-ball. It was this game which the new boy watched, trying to get an inkling of how it was played. He stood by the school-house door, and the girls who…