retty hard, among them Babe Durgon, who
delighted in tormenting me.

"Is it a sheep? Him-yah, him-yah." Again they jabbed me, and I was so
mad I was cussing them under my breath.

"Is it a pig? Him-yah, him-yah."

The audience was breathless with tense excitement.

"Is it a goat?"

The entire gallery broke into a whirlwind roar: "Yes! yes! He's a goat."

Laughter rocked the audience. They all knew I was Welsh and saw the
joke. The horror and suspense had been so great that when it broke with
comic relief the house was really hysterical. It stopped the show.

I played supernumerary parts in many shows that winter including Richard
III and other Shakespearean plays. At the battle of Bosworth field where
Richard cries: "A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a horse," the supers in
the army were clattering their swords on the opposing shields in a great
hubbub and shouting, "Hay, hay hay!" I was of a thrifty turn of mind,
and said: "Hold on, boys. Don't order too much hay until we see whether
he gets the horse or not."

A hypnotist came to the opera-house and I volunteered to be hypnotized.
He couldn't hypnotize me. I felt rather bad about it. I was out of the
show. Later I learned that all of the "Perfessor's" best subjects came
with him under salary, and the local boys who made good were faking like
the professionals. The whole thing was a cheat and I had not caught on.
I was too serious-minded to think of faking. But several of the boys
took to it naturally, and among them was Babe Durgon, the bully. He
could be hypnotized and I couldn't. But several years later I had the
satisfaction of "hypnotizing" him myself, as I told about in my first
chapter.

Although I always regarded myself as a humorist, the impression I made
on my comrades was that of a serious and religious fellow. I quoted the
Bible to them so often that they nicknamed me "the Welsh Parson." I was
the general errand boy of the town. Everybody knew me. And when there
was a job of passing hand-bills for the operahouse, or ringing bells for
auction sales, I always got the job. Every nickel that rolled loose in
the town landed in my pocket and I took it home to mother. Mother was my
idol and what she said was law. One night I heard the band playing
and started down-town. Mother told me to be sure to be in bed by nine
o'clock. I found that a minstrel show had been thrown out of its regular
route by a flood and was playing our town unexpectedly. The stage ha