old him things he
didn't know before. Now, go at your work as you did at doctoring and
you'll learn. It has been the regret of your mother's life that you did
not learn to be a doctor. I've sometimes thought old Hare just pretended
your medicine made him sick to get out of paying the bill. I don't think
Dr. Playford cared one thing about it so far as you was concerned but
the other doctors talked so about it he just had to let you go. I've
always felt sorry about it because, if any of our family is taken down
with a fever, Playford is the only fever doctor in town."

Arguments of this character occurred almost daily. Alfred grew more and
more dissatisfied, the father more insistent. Alfred kept up his
minstrel work, appearing ever and anon in amateur exhibitions. Folks
kept pouring it into his ears: "Well, if I had your talent this town
wouldn't hold me fifteen minutes; I'd take the boat for Pittsburg
tonight. What does your father mean by holding you down in this way?
Does your mother favor it? Why, your folks are standing in their own
light. If I had a boy like you I'd hire him out and travel with him,"
was Shuban Lee's comment.

All this was not calculated to cool the ardor of an ambitious amateur.
Alfred read the _New York Clipper_ weekly. He wrote many letters to many
minstrel managers to which he did not receive replies.

Charles Duprez, of Duprez and Benedict, answered one of Alfred's letters
thusly:

DEAR SIR:

In answer to your letter--do you double in brass?

CHARLES DUPREZ.

Alfred read and re-read the letter and finally answered:

MR. CHARLES DUPREZ:

RESPECTED SIR: I do not double in brass or anything else. I'm a
minstrel, not a contortionist.

ALFRED GRIFFITH HATFIELD.

No reply ever came. Alfred concluded the minstrel field was overcrowded
or managers would not have permitted him to remain idle, especially in
view of the fact that he had offered to give their full performance, for
as low as twenty dollars a month, washing and mending. To one manager he
added a confidential P. S.: "If you are not doing very well I can put
you on to a good thing, a panorama. I'm a panoramist."

Alfred turned his attention to acrobatics. Every spare hour was spent on
the tan bark pile with Lint Dutton, James Todd Livingston, Tom White
and Lash Hyatt. Lint Dutton was determined to learn bare-back riding.
Sneaking his father's horse from the barn, he would endeavor to stand
a