A Base-ball Romance

In the bul): window of a Chestnut street auction-house is exposed a magnificent mahogany mace, tipped witb elaborately-worked silver. For over an hour a very seedy individual, with red hair and a broken nose, lingered about the window with such a mysterious manncr as to lead the officer on the corner to believe that his intentions were not good, so he "took him in" on general principies. When the officer related to the court his ground for the arrest, and, finding themnot tenable, the magistrate quizzed the prisoner as to who and what he was. " What where you doing there?" queried the Court. " Nothing, Jedge simply admiring and meditating." "Admiring what? " " That bat, Jedge. the beautiful baseball bat." " Yon are evidentlv an admirer of the game of base-ball," interposed the court. " No more, 'Squire. Was once. I'm a martyr, I am. I'm no good any more. It's gone down now, has the game. How I could scoop in a fly-scraper? Shy thet inkstand at me, Jedge. Toss her sharp. Bounce her now. Hot, me boy, an' I'll show yer how to stop her. No, they won't have me no more ; I'm played, they aay. Gimme something. Bu'st off that table-leg and gimme a smack at that inkstand. Fire her this way hot, and if I don't show yer a homer yer can send me down for goed. Ten years ago I was a big crao on the field; short-stop, you know. A 11 broke vtp now. Couldn't get a job now scraping the stick. I could skin over the bases like greased lightning runs. Thi-ow opfn that door once. Just hold her open two minutes, and see me get up ,and git. But, I reckon, I'm no account now'days, though." "You don't look as though you'd bring a prize," put in the court. "Not for boauty, no. But for scars, Jedge ; for scars I'm prime cheese ; head of the heap. I'm a martyr, I am, but nobody would guess it." "A martyr to what?" said the court. "To sky-scrapers, Jedge; daisy-cutters- -homers, yer know. Taking 'em hot, right off the tip of the bat. Oh, yes, I'm a martyr. Do you see that hand?" and he exposed a palm about as broad as a deal-table, with five horribly damaged fingers starting from its edges. "Them tells the tale. All of them bu'sted time and again. Had 'em druv in clear up to the second j'int, and pulled out with tweezers dozens of times. Every finger broke in six places ; five times six, thirty ; thirty breaks on the right hand, thirty bu'sted on the left. Twice thirty, sixty ; five twelves, sixty. Five dozen broken fingers in the cause, and ain't worth a continental. Pulled in for gazing and meditating on a prize bat. This is too hard !" "It is indeed hard," said the court. "Do you see that smelling apparatus on my countenance? Looks as though it was too big for the face, don't it? I sacrificed her. Once it was the beautifullest nose as ever your eyes sot on, but a ball took her on a fiy, with three fingers. But I'm no good. Oh! no, I don't understand the game. Can't even gaze on a prize bat, or medítate, but am run in. All right, Jedge. Sock 'er to me. Send it hot. I'm on the home run, and you might as well put me out." He was put out in the street, and was heard to say, as he went through the door, that he knew he would be called upon to die for the cause soine time, to