Forest City Club, I ought to urge you to stay; but, as a friend to whom you have come for advice, I must say to you, accept the offer and go; but," he added, smiling, "you needn't tell that I advised it."
And so, in the fall of 1867, I went to Chicago, ostensibly to accept a clerkship in a wholesale grocery, but really to become a member of the Chicago Excelsior Base Ball Club. It may interest some to know that I never played but one game with the Excelsior team. Before the next springtime had rolled around the great wholesale house with which I had become connected failed—not entirely on account of the size of my salary, I trust—and a few days later saw me back at Rockford, again a member of the Forest City Club, where I was warmly welcomed, having received employment in the insurance office of A. N. Nicholds, Secretary of the club, and on the Rockford Register, at moderate salary, under the management of E. H. Griggs, who had meantime been elected Secretary of the National Association of Base Ball Players.
As to the question of my agreeing to accept a semi-professional position on the Excelsior team of Chicago at a time when professionalism of every kind was "tabu," I have this to say: Although at this date there was no strictly professional club in existence—the Cincinnati Red Stockings not being organized as such until 1869—the rule prohibiting salaries was nevertheless a dead letter. Most clubs of prominence, all over the country, had players who were either directly or indirectly receiving financial advantage from the game. Some held positions like that proffered me; others were in the pay of individual lovers
