MOVED TO TOWN.
We moved to the county seat, Barbersville, now Camden, and went into the hotel business. We furnished a good table, clean house, clean beds, was popular and crowded from the start—lots of old family friends from far and near, called for entertaining whom it would have been an outrage on Southern hospitality to tender, or accept compensation. In this way all profits were "chawed up"—a mighty poor way to run a hotel. But we older boys were pretty good hustlers, earned enough to help along, tiding over and in the education of the younger children.
My first stunt in that direction was starting an express and stage line. Carried passengers and freight between our town and Bridgeport, nearest landing on the Alabama River. My outfit was a one-horse affair with a highly prized annex—an undersized black cur, "Beaver,"—worthless in the estimation of everyone, other than his affectionate owner.
About this time, two enterprising young men from New England started a general store at the landing. On a return trip from the East to buy goods, one of them brought with him a large Newfoundland dog—the first one in those parts, which he "sicked" onto Beaver. Owing to the difference in size, results were quick and one-sided. Seeing me crying in affectionate, helpless distress, the fellow had the heartless bad taste to exultingly ask: "What do you think of that, young man?" My response between sobs was: "You, a big man, made a big dog lick a little boy's little dog. By and by, I will be as big as you and will then do to you what has been done today to my Beaver." Years afterwards, when, perhaps, as the first successful Californian to return, the people of dear old Camden tendered me quite an ovation, he of the dog fight, among them, was loud in expressing welcome and personal admiration, which made it deucedly bad taste in me to allude to the old thing, by saying: "If now the attempt was made to execute the promised retaliation, it would show a malicious, revengeful spirit, without in any way changing what occurred in the long ago, so please consider the incident closed," and so it was with a snap.