that he carried on his travels for
years.

The company left Toronto on a Sunday morning for a five months' tour.
Pa and Ma Turnpike and William did not go to bed after he reached home
from the theatre on the Saturday night. There was no trunk packing to
do; that had been attended to hours before. But there was much to be
said between those three, and none could say it without tears and
broken voices. And so at last they sat together, Pa Turnpike on one
side and William on the other side of Ma's easy chair. She held one of
William's hands tightly in her own, and when she could, she talked to
him the mother talk that so many have heard and heeded not, and would
give all they have to hear again. And William made promises to keep
his feet dry; to watch his throat; to be careful of the food he ate; to
take all the sleep he could, and then, fifty times at least, to leave
liquor alone, and to write home as often as he could. Pa Turnpike
backed his wife strongly on the liquor question. "Leave it alone,
boy," he said, "leave it alone: it never was, and never will be, any
good." And William nodded assuringly. "Don't be afraid of that," he
said confidently, "I've got no use for it."

At eight o'clock in the morning there was a hurried call to the
bedrooms occupied by the younger Turnpikes, and William kissed them
gently, for all but Pete were fast asleep. Pete jumped out of bed and
dressed hurriedly. "I'm going to the station with 'Mister Actor Man,'"
he announced, and a few minutes later William, Pete, and Pa Turnpike,
in one of the latter's express wagons, with one trunk containing
William's stock of clothes, proceeded briskly down the street.
William's mother stood at the door answering with her own the waving of
William's handkerchief until the wagon turned a corner. . . . Then she
went back to weep.

Inside the Union Station--that horror of horrors that still appals the
train-borne visitors to a great city--William and his escorts were met
by Lucien, Whimple, and Epstein. There was much affected gaiety, but
the hopes for William's future were almost overwhelmed in the deep
regret at his departure. Tommy Watson was an absentee, and William
felt this keenly, although he said nothing of it. Pa Turnpike made a
shrewd guess at the cause of his boy's furtive glances around the
station, and murmured to Epstein, "I thought Mr. Watson would have been
down."

"So did I," answered the old comedian, a little apologet