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 gift of his estimable wife, describes the National-Forest City game in these words:

The Chicago papers taunted the Nationals on their defeat, and anticipated a signal victory for their "Champions of the West," the Chicago Excelsiors, next day. The crowds present on the 26th, when the Excelsiors met the Nationals, was the largest ever seen at a match out West up to that time, though the admission fee was half a dollar. From the very outset of the contest the Nationals played the finest game of their tour, not only in pitching and batting, but especially in fielding, while the Excelsiors, after the first innings, which ended seven to nothing against them, "went up in the air," as the saying is, and came out of the fight the most demoralized set of ball players ever seen in Chicago. To be beaten at all was bad enough, but to be whipped by a score of 49 to