Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/49

Rh basso in the volunteer quartet which sang opposite the paid quartet.

I have two stock stories, one of how William Lloyd Garrison, the great antislavery leader, blacked my boots, and the other of how Bishop Potter put me out of Grace Church. There is a bronze statue of Garrison on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston across from the Hotel Vendome. When I am in Boston I like to steer some friend by the statue, pause idly to glance at it, read the inscription aloud, and say casually, "Ah, yes. William Lloyd Garrison. He once blacked my boots."

As Garrison has been dead nearly fifty years, and as few men ever have been farther removed from shoe shining, my boast could hardly be more absurd; yet it is true. In my childhood my mother and I were guests at the Garrison home, and the gallant old idealist, who had been a close friend of my grandfather, took me for a walk before breakfast one morning.

We wandered about the ruins of an old mill, and I came away with my shoes white with mortar dust. Before we entered the house Mr. Garrison carefully dusted those shoes for me.

In much the same sense is it true that Bishop Potter once put me out of his church. At the