Ordeals

I was my mother's Little Lord Fauntleroy and the apple of my Grandfather Meek's eye. My mother on stated occasions dressed me in knee pants with starched, ruffled, collared blouses, much to my displeasure.

There was an old Scotch costume in the Meek family that had come down through the ages, and some male member of each generation of the family had to have his picture taken in the outfit. This fate befell me at the age of nine.

A traveling photographer came to town. He pitched a tent studio out in Chinatown, and my mother adorned me in this Scotch layout and marched me over to the tent for the picture.

It turned out O.K. and was placed in the archives of family portraits, but the whole thing was a painful ordeal as far as I was concerned.

Only one other event at this stage of life caused me more mental pain than the picture-taking event. This was that of my being baptized in the Trinity Episcopal Church in Nevada City. It had to be that church because that denomination seemed to be the one which had descended with the Meek family.

For that memorable occasion in my Grandmother Langdon's house at Nevada City, I was groomed fit to kill in the very latest, including a set of gold cuff buttons with my initials engraved thereon. The cuffs of my starched shirt were so rigid that it was almost impossible to get the cuff buttons through them, and in so doing, my dad made a dent in both of them, which was not accepted with any degree of happiness by the gentler sex of the family.

Finally I was in due form, and we proceeded to the church where all that I could remember of the ceremony was that the preacher splashed some water on my forehead, which I did not appreciate, and that was it.

And it was the first, last, and only time I have ever been in an Episcopal church for any religious function concerning myself. I presume, however, that it did whatever good it was supposed to. All of these things are a part of every well-regulated human being's life, so I assume that it was in proper order; at least done in good faith and not just to discomfort me.