The Golden Honeymoon | Page 6

to just not offend an old chatter-box from
Michigan.
I felt sorry for Hartsell one morning. The women folks both had an
engagement down to the chiropodist's and I run across Hartsell in the
Park and he foolishly offered to play me checkers.
It was him that suggested it, not me, and I guess he repented himself
before we had played one game. But he was too stubborn to give up
and set there while I beat him game after game and the worst part of it
was that a crowd of folks had got in the habit of watching me play and
there they all was, hooking on, and finally they seen what a fool Frank
was making of himself, and they began to chafe him and pass remarks.
Like one of them said:
"Who ever told you you was a checker player!"
And:
"You might maybe be good for tiddle-de-winks, but not checkers!
I almost felt like letting him beat me a couple games. But the crowd
would of knowed it was a put up job.
Well, the women folks joined us in the Park and I wasn't going to
mention our little game, but Hartsell told about it himself and admitted
he wasn't no match for me.
"Well," said Mrs. Hartsell, "checkers ain't much of a game anyway, is
it?" She said: "It's more of a children's game, ain't it? At least, I know
my boy's children used to play it a good deal."
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "It's a children's game the way your husband
plays it, too."

Mother wanted to smooth things over, so she said:
"Maybe they's other games where Frank can beat you."
"Yes," said Mrs. Hartsell, "and I bet he could beat you pitching
horse-shoes."
"Well," I said, "I would give him a chance to try, only I ain't pitched a
shoe in over sixteen years."
"Well," said Hartsell, "I ain't played checkers in twenty years."
"You ain't never played it," I said.
"Anyway," says Frank, "Lucy and I is your master at five hundred."
Well, I could of told him why that was, but had decency enough to hold
my tongue.
It had got so now that he wanted to play cards every night and when I
or Mother wanted to go to a movie, any one of us would have to
pretend we had a headache and then trust to goodness that they
wouldn't see us sneak into the theater. I don't mind playing cards when
my partner keeps their mind on the game, but you take a woman like
Hartsell's wife and how can they play cards when they have got to stop
every couple seconds and brag about their son in Grand Rapids?
Well, the New York-New Jersey Society announced that they was goin'
to give a social evening too and I said to Mother, I said:
"Well, that is one evening when we will have an excuse not to play five
hundred."
"Yes," she said, "but we will have to ask Frank and his wife to go to the
social with us as they asked us to go to the Michigan social."
"Well," I said, "I had rather stay home than drag that chatterbox
everywheres we go."

So Mother said:
"You are getting too cranky. Maybe she does talk a little too much but
she is good hearted. And Frank is always good company."
So I said:
"I suppose if he is such good company you wished you had of married
him."
Mother laughed and said I sounded like I was jealous. Jealous of a cow
doctor!
Anyway we had to drag them along to the social and I will say that we
give them a much better entertainment than they had given us.
Judge Lane of Paterson made a fine talk on business conditions and a
Mrs. Newell of Westfield imitated birds, only you could really tell what
they was the way she done it. Two young women from Red Bank sung
a choral selection and we clapped them back and they gave us Home to
Our Mountains and Mother and Mrs. Hartsell both had tears in their
eyes. And Hartsell, too.
Well, some way or another the chairman got wind that I was there and
asked me to make a talk and I wasn't even going to get up, but Mother
made me, so I got up and said:
"Ladies and gentlemen," I said. "I didn't expect to be called on for a
speech on an occasion like this or no other occasion as I do not set
myself up as a speech maker, so will have to do the best I can, which I
often say is the best anybody can do."
Then I told them the story about Pat and the motorcycle, using the
brogue,