Property:Text
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"Text" is a predefined property that represents text of arbitrary length and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki. This property is pre-deployed (also known as special property) and comes with additional administrative privileges but can be used just like any other user-defined property.
This is a property of type Text.
1
<p>[The Jester speaks] "I came to save my master, and if he will not consent, basta! I can but go away home again. Kind service can not be checked from hand to hand like a shuttle-cock or stool-ball. I'll hang for no man . . . ."</p>
<p>Scott, Walter, <u>Ivanhoe; A Romance</u> (D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1904), page 257. Reference provided by John Thorn 6/11/2007.</p> +
<p>"As to sports and pastimes, the boys are faithfully exercised in all that are on record: quoits, races, prison-bars, tip-cat, trap-ball, bandy-ball, wrestling, leaping, and what-not."</p>
<p>Washington Irving [writing as Geoffrey Crayon], Bracebridge Hall: Or, The Humourists (Putnam's, New York, 1888: written in 1819), page 332. Contributed by Bill Wagner, email o f March 25, 2009. Accessed via 2/3/10 Google Books search (bracebridge tip-cat). The setting is Yorkshire. <b>Note:</b> if cricket, base-ball, rounders, or stoolball were played at the fictional school, it was relegated to "what-not" status.</p> +
<p>At the close of the Civil War, a dispute on the actual age Joseph Crele, who claimed to be 139 years old, reached Milwaukee newprint: "Beouchard . . . says he has known Crele for 40 years. In 1819, at Prarie du Chien, Crele was one of the most active participants in the games of base ball, town ball foot races, horse races, &c, and yet at that time, by the claim made for him, he must have been 93 years old."</p>
<p><u>Milwaukee</u><u>Daily</u> Sentinel, April 4, 1865. As posted to the 19CBB listserve by Dennis Pajot, December 11, 2009. Prarie du Chien is about 90 miles west of Madison WI, on the Mississippi River. <b>Note:</b> it is interesting that Beouchard recalls two distinct games [and/or two distinct names of games] being played.</p> +
<p>In a report on the new session of the Connecticut legislature: "In Hartford and the region about the same, those who usually play ball during the day and dance at night on such occasions, did not at this time wholly abandon the ancient uses of Connecticut."</p>
<p><u>Indiana Central</u>, June 8, 1819, reprinting an article datelined New Haven CT from May 5. Accessed 4/9/09 via subscription search.</p> +
<p>"Emily: In playing at base-ball, I am obliged to use al my strength to give a rapid motion to the ball; and when I have to catch it, I am sure I feel the resistance it makes to being stopped; but if I did not catch it, it would soon stop of itself.</p>
<p>"Mrs B.: Inert matter is as incapable of stopping itself as it is of putting itself in motion. When the ball ceases to more, therefore, it must be stopped by some other cause or power; but as it is one with which your are as yet unacquainted, we cannot at present investigate its powers."</p>
<p>Jane H. Marcet, <u>Conversations on Natural Philosophy</u> [Publisher?, 1819], page? <b>Note:</b> Mendelson, a retired professor at Marquette University, originally located this text, but attributed it to a different book by Mrs. Marcet. David Block found the actual 1819 location. He adds that while it does not precede the Jane Austen use of "base-ball" in <u>Northanger Abbey</u>, "I still consider the quote to be an important indicator that baseball was a popular pastime among English girls during the later 18<sup>th</sup> and early 19<sup>th</sup> centuries." David Block posting to 19CBB, 12/12/2006.</p> +
<p>But a day seems to have elapsed since meeting with our neighboring boys, we took delight in [flying kites and prancing our horses] or engaged ourselves in the more active sports of 'playing ball' or 'goal. -- Albert Ware Paine, telling of boyhood in Bangor Maine.</p> +
<p>"On the green and easy slope where those proud columns stand,</p>
<p>In Dorian mood, with academe and temple on each hand,</p>
<p>The foot-ball and the cricket-match upon my vision rise</p>
<p>With all the clouds of classic dust kicked in each other' eyes."</p>
<p>This verse is incorporated without attribution in Brooks Mather Kelley, <u>Yale: a History</u> (Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 1974), page 214. Kelley's commentary: "[Cricket] may have been a sport at Yale then [in the Colonial period]. The first clear reference to it, owever, is in one stanza of a poem about Yale life in 1818 to 1822." <i>Ibid.</i> Is Yale shielding us from some racy student rhymes? Oh, not to worry: From a rival Ivy League source we see that Lester identifies the poet as William Cromwell - John A. Lester, <u>A Century of Philadelphia Cricket</u> (U of Penn Press, Philadelphia PA, 1951), page7. <b>Note:</b> OK, so who was William Cromwell, and why did he endow so many chairs at Yale?</p> +
<p>"after the 'raising' of this building, at which, as was customary on such occasions, there was a large gathering of people who came to render voluntary assistance, the assembled company adjourned to the adjacent meadow (now owned by Charles Frost) for a game of baseball, and that certain excellent old ladies were much scandalized that prominent Baptists, among them Deacon Porter, should show on such an occasion so much levity as to take part in the game."</p>
<p>Joseph Anderson, ed., <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Town and City of Waterbury, Connecticut, from the Aboriginal Period to the Year 1895,</span> Volume III (Price and Lee, New Haven CT, 1896), page 673n. Accessed 2/3/10 via Google Books search (Waterbury aboriginal III).</p> +
<p>"Contrary to the once commonly held belief that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839, a form of the game existed in Oxford County [ON] during the early decades of the nineteenth century that used a square playing field with four bases and eleven players a side." Nancy B. Bouchier, <u>For the Love of the Game: Amateur Sport in Small-Town Ontario, 1838-1895</u> (McGill-Queens University Press, 2003), page 100. <b>Note:</b> Dating this item to the 1820's is a best guess [we are asking the author for input], based on additional evidence from N. Bouchier and R. Barney, "A Critical Evaluation of a Source on Early Ontario Baseball: The Reminiscence of Adam E. Ford," <u>Journal of Sport History</u>, Volume 15 number 1 (Spring 1988). Players remembered as attending the 1838 event included older "greyheaded" men who reflected back on earlier play - one of whom was on the local assessment roll in 1812.</p> +
<p>Writing of this period, Ford summarizes: "Much single-wicket cricket was played, and wager matches continued, but from the mid 1820s both these features gradually disappeared from the scene as cricket was 'cleaned up.' Of equal importance the game at club level spread and grew strong." John Ford, <u>Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835</u> [David and Charles, 1972], page 22. Ford does not give citations for this account.</p> +
<p>A woodcut illustration of boys playing with a bat and ball appears in a book entitled <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Children's Amusements</span> . The book contains an illustration of ball playing (page 9) and this text (page 10):</p>
<p>"Playing ball is much practised by school boys and is an excellent exercise to unbend the mind, and restore to the body that elasticity and spring which the close application to sedentary employment in their studies within doors, has a tendency to clog, dull or blunt. But, when practised as is the common method, with a club or bat great care is necessary, as sometimes sad accidents have happened, by its slipping from the hand, or hitting some of their fellows. We would therefore, recommend Fives as a safer play in which the club is not used and which is equally good for exercise. The writer of this, beside other sad hurts which he has been witness of in the use of clubs, knew a youth who had his skull broke badly with one, and it nearly cost him his life."</p>
<p> </p> +
<p>A "rambling" railway passenger reflects as he passes through the English countryside: "The rambler sees a pretty white spire peeping out of the woodland before him . . . . The road leads to Stoke Green. Alas! We may lament for what is no more, and the name is a mockery. There <i>was</i> a village green some twenty years ago . . . . and the cheerful spot where the noise of cricket and bass-ball once gladdened the ear on a summer eve is now silent."</p>
<p>Ah, the good old days. "Railway Rambles," <u>Penny Magazine</u>, Oct 23, 1841, page 412. Accessed 2/11/10 via Google Books search ("railway rambles" penny 1841). The location is evidently about 20 mi W of London. Source: Tom Altherr, "Some Findings on Bass Ball," <u>Originals,</u> February 2010, page 2.</p> +
<p><u>Juvenile Recreations</u> [London], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 189. Accompanying the Trapball engraving: "Then Master Batt he did decide,/That they might one and all,/Since Rosebud fields were very wide,/Just play Trap bat and ball,/Agreed said all with instant shout,/Then beat the little ball about."</p> +
<p>"In my early boyhood I was permitted to run at large in the [Williamstown MA] street and over broad acres, playing 'one old cat,' and base ball (no scientific games or balls as hard as a white oak boulder in those days) excepted when pressed into service to ride the horse to plough out the corn and potatoes."</p>
<p>-- Keyes Danforth</p> +
<p>"Ballplaying seems to have been extensively practiced in 1820. At the town meeting of that year, it was voted that 'the game of ball, and the pitching of quoits, within the following limits {main Street to the beach, etc] be prohibited.' High Street, at Hopkins Corner, was the favorite battle-ground for ball-players as early as 1805." Joseph Williamson, <u>History of the City of Belfast in the State of Maine, From its First settlement in1770 to 1875</u> (Loring & Co., Portland, 1877), page 764. <b>Note:</b> Williamson does not provide original sources for the 1820 ordinance or for the 1805 claim.</p> +
<p>A group of Philadelphians who may eventually organize as the Olympic Ball Club begin playing town ball in Philadelphia, PA, but are prohibited from doing so within the city limits by ordinances dating to Colonial times. A site in Camden, New Jersey is used to avoid breaking the laws in Philadelphia. <b>Caution:</b> this unsourced item, retained from the original chronology of 70 items, has been seriously questioned by a researcher familiar with Philadelphia ballplaying. This group may correspond to the eighteen ropemakers whose ball play is cited in “A Word Fitly Spoken,” published in <u>The American Sunday School Magazine</u> of January 1830, pp. 3-5.</p> +
<p>"Of those [students] of Columbia, I write advisedly - they were not members of a boat club, base-ball, or foot-ball team. On Saturday afternoons, in the fall of the year, a few students would meet in the 'hollow' on the Battery, and play an irregular game of football . . . As this 'hollow' was the <em>locale</em> of base-ball, "marbles," etc., and as it has long since been obliterated, and in its existence was the favorite resort of schoolboys and all others living in the lower part of the city, it is worthy of record"</p>
<p>Haswell recalls the Battery grounds as "very nearly the entire area bounded by Whitehall and State Streets, the sea wall line, and a line about two hundred feet to the west; it was of an uniform grade, fully five feet below that of the street, it was nearly uniform in depth, and as regular in its boundary as a dish."</p>
<p> </p> +
<p>"This game [bullpen, the local favorite] was, in time, abandoned for a game called "town ball;" the present base ball being town ball reduced to a science."</p>
<p><u>The History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois</u> (Baskin and Company, Chicago, 1879), page 252. Contributed by Jeff Kittel, January 31, 2010. Jeff notes that the author was in this passage describing educational conditions in the early 1820s. The two counties are just north of Springfield IL.</p> +
<p>David Block reports: "In the lengthy 'Editor's Table' section of this classic monthly magazine [<em>The Knickerbocker</em>], the editor described a nostalgic visit that he and two old school chums had taken to the academy that they had attended near Syracuse. 'We went out upon the once-familiar green, as if it were again 'play time', and called by name upon our old companions to come over once more and play <strong>'bass-ball.</strong>' But they answered not; they came not! The old forms and faces were gone; the once familiar voices were silent.'" </p> +
<p>Alfred Holbrook was born in 1816. His autobiography, <u>Reminiscences of the Happy Life of a Teacher</u> (Elm Street, Cincinnati, 1885), includes youthful memories that would have occurred in the 1820s.</p>
<p>"The [school-day] plays of those times, more than sixty years ago, were very similar to the plays of the present time. Some of these were "base-ball," in which we chose sides, "one hole cat," "two hole cat," "knock up and catch," Blackman," "snap the whip," skating, sliding down hill, rolling the hoop, marbles, "prisoner's base," "football," mumble the peg," etc. Ibid. page 35. <b>Note:</b> was "knock up and catch" a fungo game, possibly?</p>
<p>"Now, it was both unlawful and wicked to play ball on fast-day, and none of my associates in town were ever known to engage in such unholy enterprises and sinful amusements on fast-days; [p 52/53] but other wicked boys, with whom I had nothing to do, made it their special delight and boast to get together in some quiet, concealed place, and enjoy themselves, more especially because it was a violation of law. Not infrequently, however, they found the constable after them. . . ." "Soon after, this blue law, perhaps the only one in the Connecticut Code, was repealed. Then the boys thought no more of playing on fast-days than on any other." Ibid, pp 52-53.</p> +