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 Cardinal Gibbons, Bishop Curtis, of Wilmington, Del., the faculty of the college and a number of visiting Catholic priests from Washington and Baltimore, they gave an exhibition of professional ball playing. The feature of the occasion was the comments on the game made by the Cardinal at the dinner given to the players in the college refectory, of which the following paragraphs are worthy of special note as being a valuable endorsement of the merits of professional Base Ball as exhibited by the most expert exemplars of the game known to the National League in 1896. The Cardinal said:

The Cardinal's words were listened to with the closest attention by the players and the clergymen, who had remained in the room after the body of students had filed