[CHAPTER THREE]
In the heydey of youth
He was awfully green,
As verdant in truth
As you have ever seen;
But he soon learned to know beans
So it seems.
"There's shorely sumthin' 'bout water that bewitches that boy," often remarked Lin. "I never seen the like of it. I'll bet anything he'll be a Baptis' preacher some day, jes' like Billy Hickman."
There never was a boy reared in Brownsville whose heart does not beat a little faster, whose breath does not come a little quicker, whose cheeks do not turn a little redder when his mind goes back to the old swimming place near Johnson's saw-mill, where the big rafts of lumber were moored seemingly for the pleasure and convenience of every boy in town. The big boys had their spring-boards for diving on the outside where the current was swifter, the water deeper, the little ones their mud slides and boards to paddle about and float on in the shallow, still water between the rafts and the bank.
There may have been factions and social distinctions as between the inhabitants of the little town when garbed and groomed, but in the nudity of the old swimming place there was a common level, and all met on an equal footing.
James G. Blaine, Philander C. Knox, Professor John Brashear and many others, who have climbed the ladder of Fame, were boys among boys in this old swimming hole. It was here they were given their first lessons in courage and self-reliance.
A balmy afternoon in late June the boys of the town were in swimming; "Al-f-u-r-d" could plainly hear their shouts of glee as he sat in the front yard at home. How he longed to participate in their sports. What wouldn't he give to be free like other boys? Was there ever a boy who did not feel that he was imposed upon, who did not imagine he was abused above all others? Such was the feeling of "Al-f-u-r-d".
He had been subjected to a scrubbing. Lin had unmercifully bored into his ears with a towel shaped like a gimlet at one corner, assuring his mother he was "dirtier 'an the dirtiest coal digger in town." He was arrayed in a clean gingham suit, topped with an emaculate white shirt, flowing collar and straw hat. Lin spent a long time in curling his hair despite protests. Those curls were "Al-f-u-r-d's" abomination. The more he abominated them the longer they grew. They reached down to the middle of his back. Arranged in a semi-circle, extending from temple to temple, they made his head appear so abnormally large his slender body seemed scarcely able to support it. He seemed top-heavy with his long curls.