Claude Dockery, who sat on the roof and saw me make the famous leap, went to Raleigh and told Tom Pence, the city editor of _The Times-Visitor_, that “Red Buck had bolted the convention.” I was the butt of papers and politicians for weeks. The Old Man said, in an editorial, that “Red Buck” would have to explain why he bolted and he did as best he could. Mr. Caldwell had dubbed me “Brick Top,” “Strawberry Blond,” and “Red Buck,” and the last name stuck because of the Maxton convention and Claude Dockery’s interview. UNTIL DEATH DO US PART The man who earns by the sweat of his brow or the cunning of his mind a comfortable living for those dependent upon him should not complain but consider the mean lot of others, less fortunate, and rejoice at his good fate. There is not a day of my life that I do not see some wretch faring worse than I; some poor person struggling desperately to keep body and soul together. Let us thank God for a sound mind and a sound body: that we do not think side-whiskers are pretty and that we have not hair-lips. One day not long ago, while hurrying from my work, I passed a Greek peanut roaster, and wondered about his lot. Day after day I had seen him with his little push-cart, but rarely had I observed any customers. “How fares it to-day?” said I, as I hurried by. “Fine, thank you: little mon, good book, good health, and heap of joy!” “There is a philosopher,” thought I to myself. “He is a happy man. His life seems to be sweet, although he has but little of the goods of this world.” That very day John, that son of Athens, had sold less than fifty cents worth of truck, yet he was rejoicing as he sat on the curbing, reading the life of Thomas Jefferson in Greek. On a fine afternoon, in the spring of 1898, I walked from the Hotel LaFayette, at Fayetteville, to the Cape Fear river. I had a purpose in making the trip; I had been threatened with a fit of melancholia and was trying to stave it off. I strolled down to the water’s edge, where fishermen were wont to tie their boats at night, and stood there looking, looking, studying the topography of the country and the people in their labor for bread and meat. I tarried on a pretty little hill, just above the river, where I had a good view of the water and surrounding fields. The territory for a hundred yards square in my immediate vicinity was bald and smooth from the constant tread of fishermen’s feet. Back of that, early vegetables and succulent grasses were springing up. Along the shore a dozen or more batteaus, or small fishing boats, were chained to stakes, or anchored to each other.