ing hole of the family spring.

Kindly invitations nor the promise of sponge cake ever induced
"Al-f-u-r-d" to again visit the grounds, or the white house with green
blinds, a buggy whip with silver bands on it, a big dog and two old
maids who, according to Lin, "didn't know nuthin' 'bout children."

CHAPTER THREE

In the heydey of youth
He was awfully green,
As verdant in truth
As you have ever seen;
But he soon learned to know beans
So it seems.

"There's shorely sumthin' 'bout water that bewitches that boy," often
remarked Lin. "I never seen the like of it. I'll bet anything he'll be a
Baptis' preacher some day, jes' like Billy Hickman."

There never was a boy reared in Brownsville whose heart does not beat a
little faster, whose breath does not come a little quicker, whose cheeks
do not turn a little redder when his mind goes back to the old swimming
place near Johnson's saw-mill, where the big rafts of lumber were moored
seemingly for the pleasure and convenience of every boy in town. The big
boys had their spring-boards for diving on the outside where the current
was swifter, the water deeper, the little ones their mud slides and
boards to paddle about and float on in the shallow, still water between
the rafts and the bank.

There may have been factions and social distinctions as between the
inhabitants of the little town when garbed and groomed, but in the
nudity of the old swimming place there was a common level, and all met
on an equal footing.

James G. Blaine, Philander C. Knox, Professor John Brashear and many
others, who have climbed the ladder of Fame, were boys among boys in
this old swimming hole. It was here they were given their first lessons
in courage and self-reliance.

A balmy afternoon in late June the boys of the town were in swimming;
"Al-f-u-r-d" could plainly hear their shouts of glee as he sat in the
front yard at home. How he longed to participate in their sports. What
wouldn't he give to be free like other boys? Was there ever a boy who
did not feel that he was imposed upon, who did not imagine he was abused
above all others? Such was the feeling of "Al-f-u-r-d".

He had been subjected to a scrubbing. Lin had unmercifully bored into
his ears with a towel shaped like a gimlet at one corner, assuring his
mother he was "dirtier 'an the dirtiest coal digger in town." He was
arrayed in a clean gingham suit, topped with an emaculate white shirt,