Watch Yourself Go By Part 54

"How do you account for his dishonesty" inquired Alfred.

"I don't account for it."

It was arranged that Spaff go to the boss, patch up matters between him and Alfred. Spaff requested Alfred remain in the hall that he might be near. The door closed on Spaff. Alfred remained near it; he wished afterwards he had not. The transom was open and every word uttered in the room floated through it.

Spaff began: "Say, boss, I've been talking to that fresh young n.i.g.g.e.r singer, and, while he don't know much, it's my opinion he knows nothing of the guy who done you for the capital prize. He's purty handy around here and I thought you better keep him. I've got him going; I told him if he left now everybody would conclude he was in on the capital prize trick. So I think he'll stick."

"What the h.e.l.l do I care whether he sticks or not? He may be straight but I doubt it. The only reason I want him to stay is that he will have trouble in finding the other guy; I'm certain they were to meet somewhere and split up the touch."

Spaff was heard to say: "No, I think you're wrong. I am sure this kid is not in on it. I know that fellow; he's slick, he's always been a sure thing man and he has been planning this touch for sometime. He simply used Alfred to get an introduction."

"Well, he's a good one. He did not want to draw the prize, he argued; all the best people in town knew him and it would be difficult to deceive them. Why, I thought he was a small town jay. He even cautioned me to have someone at the door to receive the money, he did not care to carry it about with him." After a pause he continued: "Well, about this boy; what shall I say to him? I don't think it's a good play to let him go; not now, at any rate. You say he's straight. Do you reckon he's on to the capital prize fake?"

"Well, I dunno," answered Spaff. "If he is, and he's dirty, he could queer us in all these towns; he's been through here with two or three Jim Crow minstrel shows; these rubes imagine he's some pumpkins. Why, I have to go out of the house every time he comes on. He's the rankest performer I ever saw; he can sing a little and that lets him out. Why don't you cut his act down one-half at least? Half of the audience, green as they are, wouldn't stay in the house if they were not waiting for their presents."

"He comes on ahead of you and hurts your act," the boss a.s.sured Spaff.

That gentleman said: "Well, we've got to give them something for their money and Alfred does pretty good; if he only had the stuff he would be all right."

The boss agreed to this. "Yes, if he had something new. Those gags he springs were told before the flood. Lord, if I had the gall of some people I'd be rich. When he came here into this room and wanted money for that stuff he's telling, I got up and opened the door and planted a kick on him and says: 'Now, leave, skip, git out of yere and don't let me see you around yere agin.'"

"Why, he never told me one word of this," and Spaff's voice evidenced his surprise. "What do you say about keeping him?" questioned Spaff.

"Oh, we've got to have someone, but watch him."

When Spaff came out of the room he found Alfred some distance from the door. "Now, I've had a hard time squaring this matter with the boss.

Someone has got to him and he is sore on you, or was. I just told him you were all right and that I would be responsible for you and he said: 'Well, I'll let him stay on your account.'"

Alfred could not restrain his anger longer. Whirling around, facing Spaff, he said in tones neither low or slow: "You go back and tell that d.a.m.n sneak that I don't want to stay with him. You tell him he is a liar if he says he ever kicked me. You tell him if he says I had anything to do with the disappearance of his capital prize money, he's another liar.

You tell him I'll meet him outside the hotel and he'll take back everything he said to you."

Spaff began to look scared. "Why, how do you know what he said to me,"

he queried in a voice that showed his fear.

"I heard every word; the transom was open; I couldn't help it. I'm glad I did hear. I know where you all stand. I'm only a boy, but I'll clean up this capital prize swindle and I'm going after it tonight. 'Watch me,' that's what the boss ordered you to do."

Poor old Spaff was thoroughly frightened. He coaxed and pleaded with Alfred to drop the matter, take his pay and he would endeavor to have his wages raised. At the first opportunity he slipped away from Alfred, ran around the back way and up to the boss's room.

Alfred was seated at the supper table. The boss entered and, with a pleasant "good evening," seated himself opposite Alfred, and familiarly inquired: "What they got for supper? They set a fairly good table here but the waiters are slow."

Alfred sulkily ate in silence, never deigning to look at or answer the questions of the boss. That gentleman rattled on, first on one subject, then another. Finally, he carelessly asked Alfred the t.i.tle of the new song he sang the night before. Never noticing the boy's rude behavior in not replying to him, he continued, dipping a half doughnut in his coffee: "I want you to tell that gag about Noah being the first man to run a boat show; I think it's the funniest thing I ever heard. Where did you get it? I always make it a point to be in the house when you tell that gag."

Alfred did not understand that all this was flattery; he imagined the boss was guying him. His face was hot, his voice trembled. Leaning over the table, he sneered: "So you come in every night to hear the jokes that came over in Noah's ark, do you? Well, you needn't come in tonight, you won't hear them. When you get through with your supper I want a settlement with you and if you think you can kick me, come out of this house and try it." He left the table and pa.s.sed out.

Instead, Spaff came to him, handing him twenty-five dollars. "Now, see here, young fellow, you're too hot-headed, you'll never get along if you keep this up. This man appreciates your work; he told me so. Say, you didn't hear right. I was in the room, I didn't hear the things you did.

Come on, now, I'll get you a raise of five dollars a week."

Alfred walked away from the man. His baggage had been conveyed to the hotel from the theatre and his preparations completed. He left the "Gift Show."

"I'll never take another chance with a fly-by-night troupe. If I can't get with the best I'll stay right here in this town. I'll paint hulls, houses or anything; I'll go back to the tan-yard; I'll go to the newspaper office; I'll do anything, I don't care what it is or how badly I hate to do it. I wouldn't be caught dead with another troupe like the last one I was with." So declared Alfred to Lin and Cousin Charley.

After Alfred was out of hearing, Cousin Charley, with a laugh, remarked he had "heard that story afore. It won't be a month till he's off agin with some kind of a show. He can't git with a good one; they wouldn't have him with a good show. (Cousin Charley had a.s.sured Alfred that very morning that he considered him the best actor he had ever seen). He'll be out with a fly-by-night troupe afore the next month. Alfred's a gone goslin'. He's got no trade an' he'll hev to scratch to make a livin'. I sort of pity Uncle John an' Aunt Mary, kase they think so much of the boy, an' it's a great pity for them. Uncle John ought to beat the foolishness out of him long ago. He never touches him, no matter what he does. Does he?"

Lin looked at Cousin Charley in a sort of pitying way as she asked: "How is. .h.i.t thet all are agin Alfurd? Ye all like him, I no ye do, but durned ef ye evur lose a shot at him. No, his pap don't whup him eny more, he nevur did beat him tu hurt; hit wus sort of a habit tu take him intu the celler to skur him but hit nevur done him a mite uf good, he jus laffed an' made fun uf hit. Ye kin do more with reasonin' with Alfurd."

Cousin Charley agreed with Lin and declared that he always took Alfred's part. "I told his father Alfred would go off some day and then they'd all be dog-goned sorry they hadn't handled him different."

"Well, Alfurd's not goin' off eny more till he goes rite; he's gettin'

more sot in his ways every day, he's mos' like a man."

Alfred's family were greatly elated that he had settled down. Staid old Brownsville was stirred from center to sandy hollow. Peter Hunt, philosopher and photographer, leased Krepp's Bottom for the announced purpose of converting it into a skating park or rink. Alfred was one of Peter's right hand men. The creeks and rivers had furnished ample fields for the skaters of Brownsville heretofore, but Peter felt the time had come when the society people of the town, who did not care to skate with the common herd, should have a more exclusive place in which to enjoy this wholesome recreation.

Therefore Krepp's Bottom was selected. The proposed park was the talk of the town. Dunlap's Creek flowed in a circle, skirting three sides of the bottom land. Levees three feet high were thrown up along the banks of the creek, a rope stretched along the west side. An opening in the levee admitted the water. Two feet of water covered the bottom. The weather turned cold, ice formed, the park was opened, and three-fourths of the public walked in free. Alfred felt that Spaff was about right in his estimate of the public.

The creek fell, the dry, clay land absorbed the water, the ice sunk and cracked in places. The waters of the creek flowed six feet below and the glory of the skating park was a memory of the past.

Later on a promoter endeavored to rent Jeffries Hall for a roller skating rink. George Was.h.i.+ngton Frazee, who learned of the man renting Jeffries' hall for a skating rink, said: "Huh! Another dam fool 'bout skeetin'. Jeffries Hall won't hold water, an' if it did hit wouldn't freeze hard enuff to bear."

For the winter the town went back to its time honored sport of sledding, "coasting" it is termed nowadays. Sleds of all kinds were seen on the hills and streets of the two towns. Even men engaged in the sport. The speed attained, especially on Scrabbletown Hill, was terrific. The big sleds, loaded with from four to eight persons, flew down the hills at the rate of a mile a minute. The sleds bore striking names, Alfred's the "West Wind." It was one of the speediest of the numerous fast ones.

Starting at the top of Town Hill, those on the Brownsville side would speed to the Iron Bridge, even across it into Bridgeport. Those sliding Scrabbletown Hill would often be sent, by the speed attained on this steep incline, across the Iron Bridge into Brownsville. Thus the coasters of the rival towns would at times, pa.s.s each other going in opposite directions.

The older men would sit in the stores and watch the sliders. The shoe-shops of McKernan and Potts were the scenes of many heated arguments as to the fleetness of the different sleds.

An old gentleman who had recently moved to Brownsville from Uniontown, endeavored to impress the shoe-shop crowds with the superiority of the sleds of the Uniontown boys over those of Brownsville. He related that a Uniontown boy slid down Laurel Hill through Uniontown and would have slid on down the pike to Searight's only he was afraid he would 'skeer'

somebody's horses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Brownsville's Winter Sport]

Shuban Lee, ever loyal to Brownsville and her sleds, related how Alfred had loaned his sled to a show fellow he brought home with him from somewhere. "The show chap did not know much about sliding. Alfred's sled was a whirlwind when it got to goin'. The show feller hauled the sled to the top of Town Hill. He started down the hill. The sled run so fast it crossed the Iron Bridge up to the top of Scrabbletown Hill. Afore he cud git off she started back down the hill, across the Iron Bridge agin, up to the top of Town Hill an' back she started. Half the men in town run out an' tried to stop thet sled but hit wus so cold they couldn't do hit. She just kept on a-goin' down one hill an' up tother."

Here the Uniontown man, with a contemptuous snort, said: "I s'pose he just kept on slidin' till he froze to death?"

"No," Shuban answered, "he didn't freeze, he just kept on slidin' till they shot him to keep him from starvin' to death. An' I kin prove hit by ole man Smith an' if you won't believe him I kin show you the feller's grave."

CHAPTER TWENTY

This world would be tiresome, we'd all get the blues, If all the folks in it held just the same views; So do your work to the best of your skill, Some people won't like it, but other folks will.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French-Swiss philosopher, nearing the end of his days complained that in all his life he never knew rest or content for the reason he had never known a home. His mother died giving him birth, his father was a s.h.i.+ftless dancing master. Rousseau claimed his misfortunes began with his birth and clung to him all his life. Rousseau was one of the few persons who have attained distinction without the aid of a home in youth. No matter how humble the home, it is the beginning of that education that brings out all the better nature of a human being.

The home is the G.o.d-appointed educator of the young. We have educational inst.i.tutions, colleges, schools, but the real school where the lessons of life are indelibly impressed upon the mind is the home. We write and talk of the higher education. There is no higher education than that taught in a well regulated home presided over by G.o.d-fearing, man-loving parents whose lives are a sacrifice to create a future for their children. The parents, rather than the children, should be given credit for the successes of this life.