"The next time Cap. dawned upon my vision was a year afterward, down in Georgia. He was doing the ballyho oration in front of a side wall circus in a mellifluous style that was just dragging the tar heels up to the entrance.
"'It's a little better than the Ohio gag,' says he, 'but I've seen better, at that. I had a good paying faro outfit in Cincinnati since I met you, but the police got sore because I wouldn't cut the takings in what they considered the right place, so they closed me up.'
"During the next five years I met Cap. in every section of the country, and handling various propositions. In San Francisco I caught him in the act of selling toy balloons on a street corner; in Chicago he was disposing of old line life insurance with considerable effect; at a county fair, somewhere in Iowa, I ran across him as he gracefully manipulated the shells.
"But Cap. did not break permanently into the show business until he coupled up with the McClintock in Milwaukee. Mac was an Irish Presbyterian, and was proud of it; he came out of the Black North and was the most acute harp, mentally, that I had ever had anything to do with. The Chosen People are not noted for commercial density; but a Jew could enter Mac's presence attired in the height of fashion and leave it with only his shoe strings and a hazy recollection as to how the thing was done.
"Now, when a team like Cap. and Mac took to pulling together, there just naturally had to be something doing. They began with a small show under canvas, and their main card was a twenty-foot boa-constrictor, which they billed as 'Mighty Mardo.' Then they had a boy with three legs, one of which they neglected to state was made of wood; also a blushing damsel with excess embonpoint to the extent of four hundred pounds. With this outfit they campaigned for one season; in the fall they bought a museum in St. Louis and settled themselves as impresarios.
"Now, in my numerous meetings with Cap. I had never thought to ask his name, so when I saw an 'ad' in the Clipper stating that Sheldon & McClintock was in need of a good full-toned lecturer that doubled in brass, I just sat me down in my ignorance and dropped them a line. They sent me a ticket to where I was sidetracked up in Michigan, and I hurried down.
"'Oh, it's you, is it?' says Cap., as I piked into the ten by twelve office and announced myself. 'Well, I've heard you throw a spiel and think you'll do. But I didn't know that you played brass. What's your instrument?'
"Now, I had a faint sentiment from the beginning that this clause in their bill of requirements would get me into trouble, for I knew no more about band music than a he goat knows about the book of common prayer.
"'I do the cymbals,' says I.
"'What!' snorts Cap., rearing up; 'I thought you wrote that you played brass?'