Watch Yourself Go By

by Al. G. Field

"Well, if you are dissatisfied with your business, I cannot understand why you have been so successful."

"Now, Uncle Tom, you misunderstand me. I am not dissatisfied with my business. I had ambitions as a boy, I have ambitions as a man."

"Are you ashamed of your calling?" This was a leading question. Alfred felt the inquisitor was digging pretty deep.

"No, Uncle, I am not. I shall always respect the calling of a public entertainer. I thank God, and pat myself on the back often, that not one dollar I possess was wrung from a human being that they were unwilling to part with. I respect myself all the more that not one penny of the little that I have saved is tainted, that is in the latter day application of the term. In my professional work I have carried gladness. I have endeavored to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. I have injured no man by my profession, but have made many happy. Why should I be ashamed of it? Of course, I often wish that I had entered a field where I could have enjoyed more opportunities; where I could have extended myself as it were. I would like to live in a larger world."

"Why, Alfred, I am again surprised. You travel the world over."

"Yes, but Uncle, it's the narrowest world you ever dreamed of. A crowd's no company. The loneliest moments I pass are when in the largest gatherings. I was cut out for a showman, but I ought to be a stationary one. If you and father and all my other relatives had only headed me for the law, perhaps I'd be a different man."

"Alfred, what was to be could not be changed. You have everything to be thankful for and little to regret. You have a faithful helpmate in your wife. Your father is a great consolation to you. He tells me of the lovely traits of your character. If I had my children around me as he has, if I could live in their love as he does, I would sacrifice all else in this world."

"Why, Uncle Tom, aren't you satisfied with your calling?"

"If you refer to the ministry, I answer 'No.' The salaries of the ministers of this country do not average five hundred dollars a year. And yet, as a class, they are the best educated the hardest working, poorest paid, underfed profession I know of. With less culture, less mental power, there are men in all walks of life that are paid three times the salary even our most eloquent and useful ministers receive. And yet, no matter how great the good a minister may have accomplished, if he makes the slightest allusion to the matter of money, it discredits him. That I have worn the livery of Christ all my days will buoy me up, and that I am proud of my service in the army of the Lord lends happiness. I have endeavored to maintain the character I have assumed in meekness and sincerity. But the character of a minister is the most assailable of that of any of the professions. The slightest slip, the one misstep, and he is lost. Like Samson, shorn of his hair, he is a poor, feeble, faltering creature, the pity of his friends, the derision of the public."

"Well, Uncle Tom, yours is not the only profession that's held back by popular prejudices. It's one of the peculiarities of the littleness of human nature. It's a sure sign of a dwarfed mind to have your actions criticized and misconstrued. There's not a great calamity, a pestilence, a plague, a drought or a famine, a Galveston disaster, a Johnstown flood, a poor family's poverty, that the theatrical profession are not appealed to first and are first to respond. But if a theatrical man interests himself in public affairs his motives are impugned."