st being Christopher Mark Antony Burton, the fourth?

And Christopher had thrived despite the fact that life, no respecter of
persons, did not spare him the misfortunes common to the race. He had
whooping cough, measles, and mumps like other children, and when at
length he reached the ripened age of six he was led to school and it was
here, with one swift, leveling blow, that his splendor vanished even as
the grass which in the morning groweth up and at night is cut down, and
withereth.

He issued forth from his home as Christopher Mark Antony Burton and
returned to it shorn of his glories and as plain Chris Burton. Was ever
transformation more complete? Certainly not in the estimation of his
father and mother. But Chris himself was overjoyed at the emancipation.
It seemed as if a ball had been lifted from his foot and left him free
as air. And the wonderful part of it was that the operation had been so
quickly and painlessly accomplished. It had taken a round-faced,
red-haired urchin just about fifteen seconds to sever his bonds.

"Christopher Mark Antony Burton!" jibed he with sardonic glee. "Haw,
haw! Can you beat it? Cut it out, Chris."

Whereupon a group of derisive youngsters had proceeded without further
ado to cut it out.

"Chris Burton! Chris Burton!" they piped, capering gleefully about their
victim.

Christopher's consent to this re-christening was not asked. The name
would have been cut in the same ruthless fashion whether he willed it or
not. Fortunately, however, he welcomed his release, and this cheerful
conformity to public sentiment earned for him at the outset of his
career vast popularity.

"Chris is all right," conceded his judges. "Poor kid! Is it his fault if
they pasted a mile-long label on him?"

Indeed common opinion generally agreed that the unhappy victim of the
Burton honors was far more sinned against than sinning, and his cause
was forthwith taken up with zealous sympathy.

"They didn't do a thing to you, you poor trout, when they wished that
tag on you, did they?" Billie Earnshaw, the leader of the gang, declared
not unkindly. "No matter, old chap! Cheer up! Forget it! We're going
to."

And they did. As completely as if the awful appellation had never
existed it was wiped from the tablets of their memory and Christopher
Mark Antony Burton fourth became Chris Burton--nothing more.

Oh, there were days when the original horror bobbed up. It appeared on
report cards and in schoo