Clyde's testimony proceeded to the point where the family had removed from Quincy, Illinois (a place resorted to on account of some Salvation Army work offered his father and mother), to Kansas City, where from his twelfth to his fifteenth year he had browsed about trying to find something to do while still resenting the combination of school and religious work expected of him.
"Were you up with your classes in the public schools?"
"No, sir. We had moved too much."
"In what grade were you when you were twelve years old?"
"Well, I should have been in the seventh but I was only in the sixth. That's why I didn't like it."
"And how about the religious work of your parents?"
"Well, it was all right—only I never did like going out nights on the street corners."
And so on, through five-and-ten cent store, soda and newspaper carrier jobs, until at last he was a bell-hop at the Green-Davidson, the finest hotel in Kansas City, as he informed them.
"But now, Clyde," proceeded Jephson who, fearful lest Mason on the cross-examination and in connection with Clyde's credibility as a witness should delve into the matter of the wrecked car and the slain child in Kansas City and so mar the effect of the story he was now about to tell, was determined to be beforehand in this. Decidedly, by questioning him properly he could explain and soften all that, whereas if left to Mason it could be tortured into something exceedingly dark indeed. And so now he continued:
"And how long did you work there?"