and innate love of
fun.

There was but one human being in the world thoroughly in sympathy with
the boy's ambitions. She it was who bought the rouge and red that
painted his face in his first attempts to become a clown. She it was who
cut up one of her best red skirts to complete the costume of which Mrs.
Young furnished the foundation in the garments Alfred was sent home in
the day of the rescue from the raft. And it is a fact that to this day
the costumes of clowns and near-clowns have been patterned after those
self-same garments and they are as strikingly funny to spectators today
as they were in the days Alfred first wore them, a tribute to Lin's
ingenuity.

Lin often remarked: "Alfurd will come to town some day a real clown in a
circus and the whole country will turn out to see him, and Litt Dawson
(the Congressman) won't be so much when Alfurd gits a-goin'. Why, he kin
sing eny song and do ent cut-up antik eny of 'em kin. He's the cutest
boy I ever seed. They'll never whup his devilishness out of him."

Lin was always an appreciative audience for Alfred. When he learned to
do head-sets, hand-springs and the like she urged him on to greater
acrobatic achievements. When he attempted to walk on his hands she
followed his zig-zag course, steadying him when he threatened to topple
over.

When Bent Wilgus, a Bridgeport boy, came up to Jeffries' Commons and
entered the ring that was once enclosed by Alfred's tent, and performed
a dozen feats that Alfred had never even witnessed, thereby winning the
applause of the crowd of boys, both Lin and Alfred remained silent. When
he did a round off a flip-flap and a high back somersault, a row of
head-sets across the ring, finishing by doing heels in the mud, Alfred
turned green with envy. He felt his reputation slipping away from him
and realized he was deposed as the boys' and girls' idol, as an actor.

Lin felt like driving the usurper off the commons. Later, she consoled
Alfred with the statement that Bent Wilgus had gum in his shoes that
made him bounce so. "His daddy keeps a shoe store an' thet's where he
gits bouncin' shoes from. I'll git ye a pair ef I hev to send to
Filadelphy fur 'em."

The Quaker City was the metropolis of the world to the good people of
the town in those days. New York City was never considered in the same
breath with old Philly.

Brownsville had but one representative in the show profession so far as
any one knew. He had left the town many