Life was a pure joy to Burton as to me. Each day was a poem, each night a dreamless sleep! Each morning at half past eight we went to the Seminary and at four o'clock left it with regret. I should like to say that we studied hard every night, burning a great deal of kerosene oil, but I cannot do so.—We had a good time. The learning, (so far as I can recall) was incidental.
It happened that my closest friends, aside from Burton, were pupils of the public school and for that reason I kept my membership in the Adelphian Society which met every Monday evening. My activities there, I find, made up a large part of my life during this second winter. I not only debated furiously, disputing weighty political questions, thus advancing the forensic side of my education, but later in the winter I helped to organize a dramatic company which gave a play for the benefit of the Club Library.
Just why I should have been chosen "stage director" of our "troupe," I cannot say, but something in my ability to declaim Regulus probably led to this high responsibility. At any rate, I not only played the leading juvenile, I settled points of action and costume without the slightest hesitation. Cora was my ingenue opposite, it fell out, and so we played at love-making, while meeting coldly at the family dining table.
Our engagement in the town hall extended through two March evenings and was largely patronized. It would seem that I was a dominant figure on both occasions, for I declaimed a "piece" on the opening night, one of those resounding orations (addressed to the Carthaginians), which we all loved, and which permitted of thunderous, rolling periods and passionate gestures. If my recollection is not distorted, I was masterful that night—at least, Joe Pritchard agreed that I was "the best part of the show." Joe was my friend, and I hold him in especial affection for his hearty praise of my effort.
On this same night I also appeared in a little sketch representing the death of a veteran of the Revolutionary War, in which the dying man beholds in a vision his beloved Leader. Walter Blakeslee was the "Washington" and I, with heavily powdered hair, was the veteran. On the second night I played the juvenile lover in a drama called His Brother's Keeper. Cora as "Shellie," my sweetheart, was very lovely in pink mosquito netting, and for the first time I regretted her interest in the book agent from Cerro Gordo. Strange to say I had no fear at all as I looked out over the audience which packed the town hall to the ceiling. Father and mother were there with Frank and Jessie, all quite dazed (as I imagined) by my transcendent position behind the foot lights.
It may have been this very night that Willard Eaton, the county attorney, spoke to my father saying, "Richard, whenever that boy of yours finishes school and wants to begin to study law, you send him right to me," which was, of course, a very great compliment, for the county attorney belonged to the best known and most influential firm of lawyers in the town. At the moment his offer would have seemed very dull and commonplace to me. I would have refused it.
Our success that night was so great that it appeared a pity not to permit other towns to witness our performance, hence we boldly organized a "tour." We booked a circuit which included St. Ansgar and Mitchell, two villages, one four, the other ten miles to the north. Audacious as this may seem, it was deliberately decided upon, and one pleasant day Mitchell and George and I loaded all our scenery into a wagon and drove away across the prairie to our first "stand" very much as Molière did in his youth, leaving the ladies to follow (in the grandeur of hired buggies) later in the day.
That night we played with "artistic success"—that is to say, we lost some eighteen dollars, which so depressed the management that it abandoned the tour, and the entire organization returned to Osage in diminished glory. This cut short my career as an actor. I never again took part in a theatrical performance.
Not long after this disaster, "Shellie," as I now called Cora, entered upon some mysterious and romantic drama of her own. The travelling man vanished, and soon after she too disappeared. Where she went, what she did, no one seemed to know, and none of us quite dared to ask. I never saw her again but last year, after nearly forty years of wandering, I was told that she is married and living in luxurious ease near London. Through what deep valleys she has travelled to reach this height, with what loss or gain, I cannot say, but I shall always remember her as she was that night in St. Ansgar, in her pink-mosquito-bar dress, her eyes shining with excitement, her voice vibrant with girlish gladness.
Our second winter at the Seminary passed all too quickly, and when the prairie chickens began to boom from the ridges our hearts sank within us. For the first time the grouse's cheery dance was unwelcome for it meant the closing of our books, the loss of our pleasant companions, the surrender of our leisure, and a return to the mud of the fields.