“Sorry, boss. If dey wuz to be had, we’d have ’um. Yessir—dis is de place. We cain’t git ’um—da’s it.”
Franklin turned upon me coldly.
“That’s what comes of not eating all that I wanted to when I wanted to. Hang it all.”
“Franklin,” I said. “I am stricken to the earth. I crawl before you. Here is dust and here are ashes.” I gesticulated with my arms. “If I had thought for one moment——”
“And all those fine melons up there!”
“I agree,” I said.
He buried his face in the bill of fare and paid no attention to me. Only Bert’s declining state of health restored him, eventually, and we left quite cheerful.
Only a block or two from our restaurant was the St. George Hotel, my brother’s resort, unchanged and as old fashioned as ever, white, with green lattices, rocking-chairs out in front, an airy, restful, summery look about it. How, once upon a time, he loved to disport himself here with all the smart idlers of the town! I can see him yet, clothed to perfection, happy in his youth, health and new found honors, such as they were. Then came Holy Trinity (church and school), at Third and Vine, an absolutely unchanged institution. It had shrunk and lost quality, as had everything else nearly with which I had been connected. The school fence, the principal’s red brick house at the back (how I used to dread it), the church next door, with the rear passage by which, when we were extra good, we went to receive colored picture cards of the saints or Jesus or Mary, and when we were bad—to be warned by the priest.
The latter adventure was terrible. It had never befallen me, but other boys had experienced it.
I cannot possibly convey to you, I fear, how very definitely this particular school and church impressed me at the time. Although I had started in several schools, this was really my first. By this time my mother was beginning to doubt the efficacy of Catholic schools in general (how they would have condemned her for that!), but as yet she was not quite positive enough in her own mind to insist on a change. When I found it was another Catholic school I was to attend I was very downhearted. I was terrorized by the curriculum, the admixture of priests, nuns and one bewhiskered Herr Professor, very young and as he seemed to me very terrible, a veritable ogre, who ruled the principal school room here. Really he was a most amazing person in his way. He had blazing eyes, heavy black eyebrows, black hair, a full black beard, and he walked with a dynamic stride which, as it seemed to me, was sufficient to shake the earth. He controlled the principal or highest grade, and I, now eleven years of age and with a tendency to read a little of everything, was deemed fit to be put there—why I never can tell.