Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/194

Rh There doesn't seem to be much money in doctoring."

"Be a civil engineer then and get rich," said Mr. Addicks gravely. "What's your line going to be, Shaw?"

"I'm going to be an author," answered Fudge earnestly.

"That's another of those well-paid professions. Guess what we'd better do is make a date to meet in the poor house in, say, twenty or thirty years!"

"Some authors make a lot of money," said Fudge.

"Do they? Maybe so. The only one I ever knew who had money in his pocket was a chap out in Laredo. Don't know as you'd call him an author exactly either; more of a poet. He traveled around on side-door Pullmans and sold poems at the houses. Said he was 'singing his way around the world.' Told me he sometimes got as much as fifty cents for a poem. Yes, he was what you might call a right successful author; one of those 'best-sellers' you hear about, I guess."

"What were the poems like?" asked Fudge.

"Well, I don't believe, between you and me and the shovel, he had more than the one, and that—let me see if I can remember it. How was it now? 'My name is' I used to know that song, too. Wait a minute. I've got it!