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WITH THE NATIONAL LEAGUE.
It was some time in the fall of 1875 and while the National League was still in embryo that I first made the acquaintance of William A.
Hulbert, who afterwards became famous as the founder of that organization and the man whose rugged honesty and clear-headed counsels made of base-ball the National Game in the truest and broadest sense of the word.
At that time Mr.Hulbert was the President of the Chicago Base-Ball Club, and in company with A.G.Spalding he came to Philadelphia for the purpose of getting my signature to a contract to play in the Western metropolis.
It was the ambition of the Chicago management to get together a championship team, and with that object in view they had already signed the big-four who had helped so many times to win the pennant for Boston, viz.: Cal McVey, first base; James White, catcher; Ross Barnes, second base; and A.G.Spalding, pitcher, and the latter, who was to captain the Chicago team, had suggested my engagement as third baseman.

I finally agreed to play with the team at a salary of $2,000, or $200 more than I was then getting with the Athletics.
I well remember Mr.Hulbert's appearance at that time.

He stood in the neighborhood of six feet, and weighed close to 215 pounds.

He had a stern expression of countenance and impressed one right from the start as being a self-reliant business man of great natural ability, and such he turned out to be.