“It’s a heap of money,” agreed Joe, “and I do hate to pass it up. But I won’t accept. I’m not an actor and I know it and they know it. I’d simply be capitalizing my popularity. I’d feel like a freak in a dime museum.”
“How do you know you’re not an actor?” asked Jim. “You might have it in you. You never know till you try.”
But Joe shook his head.
“No,” he said, “there’s no use kidding myself. And even if I could make good, I wouldn’t do it. You know what it did for Markwith the season after he made his record of nineteen straight. He never was the same pitcher after that. The late hours, the feverish atmosphere, the irregular life don’t do a ball player any good. They take all the vim and sand out of him. No vaudeville for yours truly.”
“Well,” said Jim, “you’re the doctor. And I guess you’re right. But it certainly seems hard to let that good money get away when it’s fairly begging you to take it.”
The telegrams came from all over the country. A lot were from Joe’s old team-mates on the St. Louis club, including Rad Chase and Campbell. Others were from newspaper publishers offering fancy prices if Joe would write some articles for them, describing the games in the forthcoming World Series. Joe knew perfectly well that this would entail no time or labor on his part. Some bright reporter would actually write the articles, and all Joe needed to do was to let his name be signed to them as the author. But the practice was beginning to be frowned upon by the baseball magnates, and it was in a certain sense a fraud upon the public, so that Joe mentally decided in the negative.
One telegram was far more precious to Joe than all the others put together. It came from Clara, his only sister, to whom he was devotedly attached, and was sent in the name of all the little family at Riverside. Joe’s eyes were a little moist as he read:
“Dearest love from all of us, Joe. We are proud of you.”
For a long time Joe sat staring at the telegram, while Jim considerately buried himself in the newspaper descriptions of yesterday’s great game.
How dear the home folks were! How their hearts were wrapped up in him and his success! What a splendid, wholesome influence that cozy little village home had been in his life. He thought of his patient, hard-working father, his loving mother, his winsome sister. He thought of their quiet, circumscribed life, shut out from the great currents of the world with which he had become so familiar.