Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1884 — The Base Ball and the Hammock. [ARTICLE]

The Base Ball and the Hammock.

“What have you done ?” drawled the East India Hammock, languidly, making a lazy effort to swing a little in the evening breeze. “Done?” said the little Base Ball, scornfully. “What have I done? Since 2 o’clock I have been at it. I broke the short stop’s fingers, knocked an eye out of the catcher, skinned the pitcher’s hands, doubled up the umpire twice, drove the wind clean out of the second base, broke six panes of glass and a woman’s head in the schoolhouse, and knocked a spectator cold. What have I done? I haven’t laid around all day, a limp mass of protoplasmic network.” And he smiled in bitter triumph as he thus displayed his college training.— Brooklyn Eagle. His Close Neighbor Went Back on Him. Mr. Mulcahy recently took “a day off,” and went down the harbor on a fishing excursion. The sea being decidedly choppy, it was not long before he paid tribute to old Neptune several times. He looked, as Mark Twain once said he felt, “as if he would disgorge his immortal soul,” and, between the rounds, blurted opt: “An’ (hie), begorra, an’ I can’t oonderstand phwy I shud be so sick, whin I wuz brought up within a mile uv the say.”— Boston Globe. “By-by, love,” he murmured, as he started down to his office in the morning, and she did, to the extent of a SSO bonnet. He says, “Good-morning” now.