Saturday, October 25, 2008

Some Foundation In Fact

A pretty story about Henry V. Lucas comes from St. Paul and has some foundation in fact. After the young Napoleon of base-ball finished sowing his wild oats and attempted to establish a league club in St. Louis he had about $50,000 left out of a fortune of $500,000. This was tangled up in a number of ways, but he braced up and straightened it out all right, and then put the money in his wife's name. He remained in St. Louis no longer than was necessary to arrange his business affairs, then he disappeared. He had a friend holding a responsible position in one of the great railroads that terminate in St. Paul, and one morning shortly after his disappearance from St. Louis he bobbed up serenely in te office of his friend and said he was there looking for a job. "You don't mean it," said his friend. "Yes, I do," replied Lucas; "I want to learn this business and to begin at the bottom." He was put to work, not exactly at the bottom, but at a salary about one third the dimensions of the one he paid Dunlap for playing second base two years ago.
-Aberdeen Daily News, November 11, 1887

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