The Runaways
by Polly S. Buck
Excerpts from portions of her manuscript that were not included in her published book “Our Blessed Town”
The little college town of Oxford was probably as near to Eden-on-earth as it was possible to get in the early years of the twentieth century. No creosoted poles bearing hideous strings of wires crowded in between the streets’ beautiful shade trees; no jangling telephone bells broke into the peace of professors’ after-dinner hammock naps, or interrupted the family’s reading aloud of Dickens in the evening lamplight; no horrid honking automobiles terrified the horses of the faculty wives sitting tall in their buggies and surreys during their afternoon rides. The serenity of the skies was not marred by throbbing, roaring airplane motors, or scarred by trails of exhaust. Nothing flew around up there in that clear blue space except birds – and maybe angels, for Heaven was straight up.
Every Sunday, the children in this idyllic setting were given little magazine papers detailing not only the lesson to be studied for the following Sunday, but also containing inspirational stories about exemplary children after whom the young everywhere would do well to pattern themselves.
Oh, these wonderful children in the Sunday school papers! They lived adventurous lives in the cities where fire engines pulled by foaming horses tore through the streets and where there was always a brave boy to rush out and save anyone who got in the way. Oxford offered no opportunities for such heroics. In the summers, the children we read about went to the seashore with a convalescent relative of the family. They played on the beach and went sailing. In Oxford, the only bodies of water nearby were Dried Indian Creek (a mere three yards wide) on the east side of town and Turkey Creek (perhaps two yards wide) on the west side.
In the winters, these Sunday school papers were blessed with stories about wonderful snow in quantities unknown to us. On rare occasion, when any snow at all fell in Oxford – perhaps every fourth or fifth winter – we had hard work to scrape together enough to fill a tumbler to which we added milk and sugar and vanilla for “snow ice cream.” Children in the papers had great quantities of snow, and all sorts of grand things happened because of it. They built snowmen and forts; they found smaller children lost in drifts and took them safely home, sometimes with a faithful dog, leaping and barking, going ahead to point out the house. They zoomed down hills on sleds, which we had never even seen, except in pictures; they skated on frozen ponds -- and someone always broke through, usually a banker’s daughter, and was saved by a brave poor boy who was generously rewarded by a grateful father.
The stories were supposed to inspire little readers to be brave, energetic and honest. But we already were! There were plenty of poor brave boys in Oxford, but what chance did they have to do anything like this? There was no frozen pond or banker’s daughter – or even a banker in town. The only reason we too were not being written about was not due to any lack of energy or heroics in us, but there was no chance of demonstrating it here.
The children in the stories had no trouble finding paying work either. They pressed into the slots of their piggy banks coins they had earned themselves. Some of them even had savings account books and stood in line at the bank and had more figures added into their lengthening columns. If their families were poor, and a grocery bill or the rent was due, these children could, with a smile, hand over a crisp new bank note they had earned to their grateful parents. These children were already well started on the road to success in life; they were winning acclaim on every hand, and having stories about them written in the Sunday school papers!
While as for Oxford children, although they were adequately fed and clothed, they really had no need of money. Under such a circumstance, they might be supposed to be perfectly happy, but they were not. They were penniless nobodies, leading inglorious lives in obscurity. No other children would ever read breathlessly about any of them! How they yearned to be rich and famous! – the two seemed to go together. If by the end of the week, other things had pushed it out of their thoughts, here came a new Sunday school paper with a new story that started them fretting again. So, instead of inspiring them, these stories only made them miserably jealous and envious, and implanted in their little bosoms the evil thing that the Oxford founding fathers had tried so earnestly to keep out of town – the desire to make money!
One warm May afternoon, three little faculty daughters, Catherine, Annie Sue, and Virginia, sat in Professor Peed’s buggy, horseless at the moment, and drawn up in the shade in his side yard. The un-hitched family buggy with shafts resting on the ground was a favorite place where they foregathered to talk things over. These three were best friends and lived a few doors from each other. For the zillionth time, they were deploring their hopeless situation in life. Here they were, all well past their eighth birthday, completely penniless, and with no prospect of being anything else. They didn’t need any money; they just wanted some of their own that they could do anything they pleased with, and gotten by work that would make everyone proud of them. But what could they do? And how to go about it?
There was no sibling or anybody else to consult. One of the girls had only much older brothers and sisters, utterly unsympathetic with her plight; the other two had one younger brother each – and they were certainly no good. They must think up something themselves. And they did.
To begin with, whatever they would decide upon couldn’t happen here. They had already given Oxford a long enough try, and there was nothing. They would have to leave Oxford and go to some city. New York and Boston were the places where the children in the Sunday school papers lived – much too far away for them. But Atlanta was a city, wasn’t it? – with a lot going on (like making money!) – and not impossibly distant. So Atlanta it would be. Not one of them had the slightest qualm at the idea of leaving home and family.
Before telephones, business messages had to be delivered by boys on bicycles, and Catherine had an uncle in Atlanta who ran a bicycle messenger service. She was sure that if they could only get there, he would give them jobs pumping up bicycle tires.
Then Annie Sue had a brighter idea. Why not teach school? In a week, Palmer Institute would “let out” and they would have finished third grade. They could easily teach first grade and pump up tires in the afternoons, for they must waste no time; they must be busy all day long. They were jubilant. Why hadn’t this wonderful idea come to them long ago?
There was still the question of how to get to Atlanta. It was forty-one miles away and none of them knew for sure exactly where it was, although finding it should not be hard, for it was much too big to miss. People always went to it on the train, and the train tracks from the Covington depot led right there. They had no money to buy train tickets, and the suggestion to go in the Peed’s horse and buggy met with an instant negative from Virginia; she knew her father would not let them take it. Besides, what could they do with the horse while they were teaching?
They would just have to walk, but they were good walkers and knew they could do it. Their homes were at the far end of town from Palmer School, and for three years they had taken the long walk there and back every day. They figured they could do the forty-one miles in three days, which would mean they would have to spend two nights somewhere along the way.
Annie Sue said that Ip, a former Oxford [servant], was now living in Lithonia, a town about halfway to Atlanta, and she knew that Ip would take them in and let them stay at her house. Virginia had an aunt and uncle in Decatur, another town even nearer to Atlanta, and they could spend the next night with them. And the third day, they would be making a triumphant entry into Atlanta itself! It was all going to work out beautifully!
To pay their board to Catherine’s uncle, the three girls would offer to do his washing, so they must take along a washtub and iron for this. They would carry another dress apiece, and some food, for Ip might not have enough to give them supper, since she wouldn’t know they were coming. Catherine volunteered her little brother Tom’s red express wagon, new last Christmas, to carry all their things.
But when this was mentioned to Tom, he loudly protested. He was decidedly unwilling to be parted from his wagon. It was the darling of his heart; he used it every day. They must have the wagon, and since Tom refused to be parted from it, although a little boy tagging along was the last thing any of them wanted, the only solution seemed to be to let him come along too. At least they could make him pull the wagon, and that would leave them free to look at things and pick flowers, or do anything else that came up. Tom was delighted. He entered right into the plan and said he would make money too by being one of his uncle’s messenger boys, or, if his uncle thought he was too little for that, he could be just a handy boy in the shop. Visions of fabulous paychecks swam in his five-year old head.
Every afternoon for a week, the girls met either in the buggy, or if that was in use, in the summerhouse on the lawn, and talked over the great adventure. They could hardly wait for the school year to end so that they could start off.
It was such a wonderful idea that they were bursting to talk of it, but they agreed that it might be just as well not to mention it at school. Some of the others might take it over and go off and do it first. But certainly it would be safe to tell their families so that they could begin right away to be proud of them.
One morning at the breakfast table, Annie Sue broke the news to her assembled family that she was going to Atlanta to teach school. Most of them went on with their meal unshaken, but her older sister, who was then teaching at Palmer, commended her highly for planning to skip the years of college and normal school and getting right at it. An older brother put in a bid to borrow ten dollars from her before Christmas.
When Virginia told her mother, Mrs. Peed (only half listening) thought for Virginia to want to be a teacher was a fine idea. Her father was a professor at Emory, and for his little daughter to plan to follow in his footsteps was splendid. With her young brother, Virginia had no such trouble as Catherine had had, for he was not a free spirit like Tom, and had no desire to go to Atlanta or anywhere else.
Sage Catherine decided not to say anything about it to her parents since they might not be enthusiastic over her taking her little brother along on such a venture. But she had to bubble over to someone, so she told her “Mammy,” an old colored woman who had been their nurse and lived nearby.
Mammy expressed stout disapproval. Why did nice children want to do a thing like that? Running away was what it was, and she wouldn’t allow it. Mammy gave a long, significant look at her “rascal-bearer,” a large hickory stick hanging on the wall of her cabin, perhaps intimately known to her own children, but never taken down for the white children, although used constantly as a threat for any disobedience. Given Mammy’s reaction, Catherine judged she had been wise not to mention the projected trip to either of her parents.
All the plans were now in good order; everything had been thought out, provided for, and discussed over and over and over. The end of the school term was the only thing holding them up.
It came at last, and a few days later, around five o’clock on a beautiful summer morning, three eight-year old girls and a little five-year old boy dragging a red express wagon, met in the Peed front yard. The wagon was loaded with things they had collected to take – a small washtub and a scrubbing-board, a flat iron, a few clothes, and some sausage cakes, corn meal muffins, ginger cakes, and a glass canning jar full of water. The adventure was underway!
On the usual way to the Covington depot, they would have to go past Mammy’s cabin, but after Catherine’s report, the travelers cannily took the back road. It was a little longer, but it circled Mammy’s cabin at a good distance, completely out of sight.
Tom soon began to complain that he was doing all the work, pulling the wagon, while the girls were skipping along in their exuberance. So, to keep him in good humor, they took turns at the wagon-tongue. At the end of about a mile more, the railway station was in sight.
Chester Gwinn, the station master, was just finishing checking some boxes outside the station and was rather surprised to see the little cavalcade at that time of day, and without an adult.
“Where are you children going? Do your parents know about it?”
The second question was the only one that seemed wise to answer, with a chorus of a more or less truthful, “Yes sir!”
“Well, stay off the railroad tracks,” he counseled, and went back into the depot for his work.
He couldn’t have said a worse thing! The tracks led to Atlanta, and they had planned to walk them. Now Mr. Gwinn, who owned the tracks, had told them to stay off of them. But how could they? That was the only way they knew to go! Well, Mr. Gwinn wasn’t their boss, so as soon as he was safely out of sight, they put off up the tracks. Obedient little Tom was made to pull the loaded wagon again, bumping over the crossties, while all three girls for the first time in their lives enjoyed the delight of balancing on the smooth silvery rails. It was just like being circus tight-rope dancers! Oh, what a beautiful world!
In the meantime, back in Oxford, the Peed household was stirring and getting ready for the day. When Virginia didn’t appear at breakfast, or answer a call up the stairs, her little brother, from the depths of his cereal bowl, piped up with the horrifying information that she wasn’t coming to breakfast because she was on her way to Atlanta, walking down the railroad tracks.
“Railroad tracks!!??”
Never had the Peed buggy been hitched up so rapidly! Never before had the ordinarily sedate Peed horse, known as the slowest in town, gotten off the ground so fast! When the buggy reached the depot, Mr. Gwinn was again working outside. He said, yes, he had seen the children earlier, but he didn’t know where they went.
“They’re walking the tracks to Atlanta!” Mrs. Peed shrieked at him, as she turned the horse and tore off in that direction.
Mr. Gwinn took one look at his watch. The accommodation train from Atlanta to Augusta was due in exactly five minutes. He snatched his bicycle from its place by the side of the station and joined Mrs. Peed on her flight toward Atlanta. She was raising a cloud of red dust on the little country road that paralleled the tracks, and he was right in the middle of the train track itself, riding madly over the uneven cross-ties.
A mile up the road, Mrs. Peed overtook the mailman, moseying along in the mail cart on his rural route. He didn’t understand what she shouted at him as she dashed past, but she pointed with her whip up the track, and he got the idea that something worth seeing was going on up there. He stood up in his turn and plied his whip.
So, while these two frantic persons were tearing up the road as fast as their horses could go, and Mr. Gwinn was pedaling up the track as fast as he could, and the accommodation train was roaring up from Atlanta at top speed, four happy, light-hearted children were enjoying the delights of a summer morning off on the greatest adventure of their lives, headed toward fortune and acclaim.
They were chatting blissfully of all the things that lay ahead, completely unaware of any danger, when Mrs. Peed and the mail man pulled up their lathered horses. The station master, with a bloody chin and shirt-front (for he had taken a tumble, come down on a steel rail, and broken out two front teeth), dragged his bicycle to safety. The warning whistle of the approaching train sounded. The children were snatched from the tracks and out of the jaws of death just in time and taken ignominiously home, each to a stout switching, even poor little innocent Tom.
It was the most exciting adventure any of our generation had ever taken part in, and we told and retold the story for years. But none of us ever tried it again! Money-making in a big city was for made-up children in Sunday school papers, not for us!
Every Sunday, the children in this idyllic setting were given little magazine papers detailing not only the lesson to be studied for the following Sunday, but also containing inspirational stories about exemplary children after whom the young everywhere would do well to pattern themselves.
Oh, these wonderful children in the Sunday school papers! They lived adventurous lives in the cities where fire engines pulled by foaming horses tore through the streets and where there was always a brave boy to rush out and save anyone who got in the way. Oxford offered no opportunities for such heroics. In the summers, the children we read about went to the seashore with a convalescent relative of the family. They played on the beach and went sailing. In Oxford, the only bodies of water nearby were Dried Indian Creek (a mere three yards wide) on the east side of town and Turkey Creek (perhaps two yards wide) on the west side.
In the winters, these Sunday school papers were blessed with stories about wonderful snow in quantities unknown to us. On rare occasion, when any snow at all fell in Oxford – perhaps every fourth or fifth winter – we had hard work to scrape together enough to fill a tumbler to which we added milk and sugar and vanilla for “snow ice cream.” Children in the papers had great quantities of snow, and all sorts of grand things happened because of it. They built snowmen and forts; they found smaller children lost in drifts and took them safely home, sometimes with a faithful dog, leaping and barking, going ahead to point out the house. They zoomed down hills on sleds, which we had never even seen, except in pictures; they skated on frozen ponds -- and someone always broke through, usually a banker’s daughter, and was saved by a brave poor boy who was generously rewarded by a grateful father.
The stories were supposed to inspire little readers to be brave, energetic and honest. But we already were! There were plenty of poor brave boys in Oxford, but what chance did they have to do anything like this? There was no frozen pond or banker’s daughter – or even a banker in town. The only reason we too were not being written about was not due to any lack of energy or heroics in us, but there was no chance of demonstrating it here.
The children in the stories had no trouble finding paying work either. They pressed into the slots of their piggy banks coins they had earned themselves. Some of them even had savings account books and stood in line at the bank and had more figures added into their lengthening columns. If their families were poor, and a grocery bill or the rent was due, these children could, with a smile, hand over a crisp new bank note they had earned to their grateful parents. These children were already well started on the road to success in life; they were winning acclaim on every hand, and having stories about them written in the Sunday school papers!
While as for Oxford children, although they were adequately fed and clothed, they really had no need of money. Under such a circumstance, they might be supposed to be perfectly happy, but they were not. They were penniless nobodies, leading inglorious lives in obscurity. No other children would ever read breathlessly about any of them! How they yearned to be rich and famous! – the two seemed to go together. If by the end of the week, other things had pushed it out of their thoughts, here came a new Sunday school paper with a new story that started them fretting again. So, instead of inspiring them, these stories only made them miserably jealous and envious, and implanted in their little bosoms the evil thing that the Oxford founding fathers had tried so earnestly to keep out of town – the desire to make money!
One warm May afternoon, three little faculty daughters, Catherine, Annie Sue, and Virginia, sat in Professor Peed’s buggy, horseless at the moment, and drawn up in the shade in his side yard. The un-hitched family buggy with shafts resting on the ground was a favorite place where they foregathered to talk things over. These three were best friends and lived a few doors from each other. For the zillionth time, they were deploring their hopeless situation in life. Here they were, all well past their eighth birthday, completely penniless, and with no prospect of being anything else. They didn’t need any money; they just wanted some of their own that they could do anything they pleased with, and gotten by work that would make everyone proud of them. But what could they do? And how to go about it?
There was no sibling or anybody else to consult. One of the girls had only much older brothers and sisters, utterly unsympathetic with her plight; the other two had one younger brother each – and they were certainly no good. They must think up something themselves. And they did.
To begin with, whatever they would decide upon couldn’t happen here. They had already given Oxford a long enough try, and there was nothing. They would have to leave Oxford and go to some city. New York and Boston were the places where the children in the Sunday school papers lived – much too far away for them. But Atlanta was a city, wasn’t it? – with a lot going on (like making money!) – and not impossibly distant. So Atlanta it would be. Not one of them had the slightest qualm at the idea of leaving home and family.
Before telephones, business messages had to be delivered by boys on bicycles, and Catherine had an uncle in Atlanta who ran a bicycle messenger service. She was sure that if they could only get there, he would give them jobs pumping up bicycle tires.
Then Annie Sue had a brighter idea. Why not teach school? In a week, Palmer Institute would “let out” and they would have finished third grade. They could easily teach first grade and pump up tires in the afternoons, for they must waste no time; they must be busy all day long. They were jubilant. Why hadn’t this wonderful idea come to them long ago?
There was still the question of how to get to Atlanta. It was forty-one miles away and none of them knew for sure exactly where it was, although finding it should not be hard, for it was much too big to miss. People always went to it on the train, and the train tracks from the Covington depot led right there. They had no money to buy train tickets, and the suggestion to go in the Peed’s horse and buggy met with an instant negative from Virginia; she knew her father would not let them take it. Besides, what could they do with the horse while they were teaching?
They would just have to walk, but they were good walkers and knew they could do it. Their homes were at the far end of town from Palmer School, and for three years they had taken the long walk there and back every day. They figured they could do the forty-one miles in three days, which would mean they would have to spend two nights somewhere along the way.
Annie Sue said that Ip, a former Oxford [servant], was now living in Lithonia, a town about halfway to Atlanta, and she knew that Ip would take them in and let them stay at her house. Virginia had an aunt and uncle in Decatur, another town even nearer to Atlanta, and they could spend the next night with them. And the third day, they would be making a triumphant entry into Atlanta itself! It was all going to work out beautifully!
To pay their board to Catherine’s uncle, the three girls would offer to do his washing, so they must take along a washtub and iron for this. They would carry another dress apiece, and some food, for Ip might not have enough to give them supper, since she wouldn’t know they were coming. Catherine volunteered her little brother Tom’s red express wagon, new last Christmas, to carry all their things.
But when this was mentioned to Tom, he loudly protested. He was decidedly unwilling to be parted from his wagon. It was the darling of his heart; he used it every day. They must have the wagon, and since Tom refused to be parted from it, although a little boy tagging along was the last thing any of them wanted, the only solution seemed to be to let him come along too. At least they could make him pull the wagon, and that would leave them free to look at things and pick flowers, or do anything else that came up. Tom was delighted. He entered right into the plan and said he would make money too by being one of his uncle’s messenger boys, or, if his uncle thought he was too little for that, he could be just a handy boy in the shop. Visions of fabulous paychecks swam in his five-year old head.
Every afternoon for a week, the girls met either in the buggy, or if that was in use, in the summerhouse on the lawn, and talked over the great adventure. They could hardly wait for the school year to end so that they could start off.
It was such a wonderful idea that they were bursting to talk of it, but they agreed that it might be just as well not to mention it at school. Some of the others might take it over and go off and do it first. But certainly it would be safe to tell their families so that they could begin right away to be proud of them.
One morning at the breakfast table, Annie Sue broke the news to her assembled family that she was going to Atlanta to teach school. Most of them went on with their meal unshaken, but her older sister, who was then teaching at Palmer, commended her highly for planning to skip the years of college and normal school and getting right at it. An older brother put in a bid to borrow ten dollars from her before Christmas.
When Virginia told her mother, Mrs. Peed (only half listening) thought for Virginia to want to be a teacher was a fine idea. Her father was a professor at Emory, and for his little daughter to plan to follow in his footsteps was splendid. With her young brother, Virginia had no such trouble as Catherine had had, for he was not a free spirit like Tom, and had no desire to go to Atlanta or anywhere else.
Sage Catherine decided not to say anything about it to her parents since they might not be enthusiastic over her taking her little brother along on such a venture. But she had to bubble over to someone, so she told her “Mammy,” an old colored woman who had been their nurse and lived nearby.
Mammy expressed stout disapproval. Why did nice children want to do a thing like that? Running away was what it was, and she wouldn’t allow it. Mammy gave a long, significant look at her “rascal-bearer,” a large hickory stick hanging on the wall of her cabin, perhaps intimately known to her own children, but never taken down for the white children, although used constantly as a threat for any disobedience. Given Mammy’s reaction, Catherine judged she had been wise not to mention the projected trip to either of her parents.
All the plans were now in good order; everything had been thought out, provided for, and discussed over and over and over. The end of the school term was the only thing holding them up.
It came at last, and a few days later, around five o’clock on a beautiful summer morning, three eight-year old girls and a little five-year old boy dragging a red express wagon, met in the Peed front yard. The wagon was loaded with things they had collected to take – a small washtub and a scrubbing-board, a flat iron, a few clothes, and some sausage cakes, corn meal muffins, ginger cakes, and a glass canning jar full of water. The adventure was underway!
On the usual way to the Covington depot, they would have to go past Mammy’s cabin, but after Catherine’s report, the travelers cannily took the back road. It was a little longer, but it circled Mammy’s cabin at a good distance, completely out of sight.
Tom soon began to complain that he was doing all the work, pulling the wagon, while the girls were skipping along in their exuberance. So, to keep him in good humor, they took turns at the wagon-tongue. At the end of about a mile more, the railway station was in sight.
Chester Gwinn, the station master, was just finishing checking some boxes outside the station and was rather surprised to see the little cavalcade at that time of day, and without an adult.
“Where are you children going? Do your parents know about it?”
The second question was the only one that seemed wise to answer, with a chorus of a more or less truthful, “Yes sir!”
“Well, stay off the railroad tracks,” he counseled, and went back into the depot for his work.
He couldn’t have said a worse thing! The tracks led to Atlanta, and they had planned to walk them. Now Mr. Gwinn, who owned the tracks, had told them to stay off of them. But how could they? That was the only way they knew to go! Well, Mr. Gwinn wasn’t their boss, so as soon as he was safely out of sight, they put off up the tracks. Obedient little Tom was made to pull the loaded wagon again, bumping over the crossties, while all three girls for the first time in their lives enjoyed the delight of balancing on the smooth silvery rails. It was just like being circus tight-rope dancers! Oh, what a beautiful world!
In the meantime, back in Oxford, the Peed household was stirring and getting ready for the day. When Virginia didn’t appear at breakfast, or answer a call up the stairs, her little brother, from the depths of his cereal bowl, piped up with the horrifying information that she wasn’t coming to breakfast because she was on her way to Atlanta, walking down the railroad tracks.
“Railroad tracks!!??”
Never had the Peed buggy been hitched up so rapidly! Never before had the ordinarily sedate Peed horse, known as the slowest in town, gotten off the ground so fast! When the buggy reached the depot, Mr. Gwinn was again working outside. He said, yes, he had seen the children earlier, but he didn’t know where they went.
“They’re walking the tracks to Atlanta!” Mrs. Peed shrieked at him, as she turned the horse and tore off in that direction.
Mr. Gwinn took one look at his watch. The accommodation train from Atlanta to Augusta was due in exactly five minutes. He snatched his bicycle from its place by the side of the station and joined Mrs. Peed on her flight toward Atlanta. She was raising a cloud of red dust on the little country road that paralleled the tracks, and he was right in the middle of the train track itself, riding madly over the uneven cross-ties.
A mile up the road, Mrs. Peed overtook the mailman, moseying along in the mail cart on his rural route. He didn’t understand what she shouted at him as she dashed past, but she pointed with her whip up the track, and he got the idea that something worth seeing was going on up there. He stood up in his turn and plied his whip.
So, while these two frantic persons were tearing up the road as fast as their horses could go, and Mr. Gwinn was pedaling up the track as fast as he could, and the accommodation train was roaring up from Atlanta at top speed, four happy, light-hearted children were enjoying the delights of a summer morning off on the greatest adventure of their lives, headed toward fortune and acclaim.
They were chatting blissfully of all the things that lay ahead, completely unaware of any danger, when Mrs. Peed and the mail man pulled up their lathered horses. The station master, with a bloody chin and shirt-front (for he had taken a tumble, come down on a steel rail, and broken out two front teeth), dragged his bicycle to safety. The warning whistle of the approaching train sounded. The children were snatched from the tracks and out of the jaws of death just in time and taken ignominiously home, each to a stout switching, even poor little innocent Tom.
It was the most exciting adventure any of our generation had ever taken part in, and we told and retold the story for years. But none of us ever tried it again! Money-making in a big city was for made-up children in Sunday school papers, not for us!