oulders could
really put it over on 'em. His mother believed his clothes was tore and
his face bunged up now and then in mere boyish sports, and begged him not
to engage in such rough games with his childish playmates. And Shelley,
the little man, let her talk on, still believing he was like little Paul
McNamara, that had a crooked foot. He wasn't going to shame his mother as
well as himself.

I don't know just how Shelley ever got his big illumination that curls
was not a curse put on him by his Maker. But he certainly did get it when
he was round twelve. After two years of finish fights he suddenly found
out that curls is optional, or a boy's own fault, if not his mother's,
and that they may be cured by a simple and painless operation. He'd come
to the observing age. They say he'd stand in front of Henry Lehman's
barber shop every chance he'd get, watching the happy men getting their
hair cut. And he put two and two together.

Then he went straight to his mother and told her all about his wonderful
and beautiful discovery. He was awful joyous about it. He said you only
had to go to Mr. Lehman's barber shop with thirty-five cents, and the
kind Mr. Lehman would cut the horrible things off and make him look like
other boys, so please let him have the thirty-five.

Then Shelley got a great shock. It was that his mother wanted him to wear
them things to please her. She burst into tears and said the mere thought
of her darling being robbed of his crowning glory by that nasty old Henry
Lehman or any one else was breaking her heart, and how could he be so
cruel as to suggest it?

The poor boy must of been quite a bit puzzled. Here was a way out of
something he had thought was incurable, and now his mother that loved him
burst into tears at the thought of it. So he put it out of his mind. He
couldn't hurt his mother, and if cutting off his disgrace was going to
hurt her he'd have to go on wearing it.

Shelley was getting lanky now, with big joints and calf knees showing
below his velvet pants; and he was making great headway, I want to tell
you, in what seemed to be his chosen profession of pugilism. He took to
going out of his class, taking on boys two or three years older. I never
had the rare pleasure of seeing him in action, but it was mere lack of
enterprise on my part. Before he found out that curls could be relieved
by a barber he had merely took such fights as come to him. But now he
went out of his way looking fo