For just one short block "Al-f-u-r-d," on the occasion referred to, traversed the right road. There the right road turned abruptly to the left. There was no road "straight ahead," but the river was there. The sound of boys' voices shouting in high glee came floating up from the old swimming place. School had let out and every boy in town was in swimming. "Al-f-u-r-d" blazed a new trail to the river. Climbing over the paling fence surrounding the burying ground, through back yards, descending the steep hill, he found himself standing on the bank of the river gazing at a spectacle that stirred his young blood--half a hundred nude boys diving, splashing, swimming and shouting were in the river below. [Illustration: The New Boy in Town] His appearance was greeted with yells and laughter. He was a "new boy" in town. "Al-f-u-r-d" was abashed by the reception accorded him. Of all the howling horde in the water below there was but one familiar face, that of Cousin Charley. "Take off your curls and come on in, Sissy," shouted one of the swimmers. A dozen of them assured "Al-f-u-r-d" the water was "jest bully." Entreaties of "Come on in," came from dozens of boys. Advice of all kinds came from others. The reference to the curls made "Al-f-u-r-d" wince. He had long felt that those curls were the one great impediment in his life--the one something that made him the butt of the jokes and gibes of other boys. He hated those curls. His first swimming experience doubly intensified his hatred for curls. Evening was drawing near. The big yellow sun had dropped behind Krepp's Knob, the shadows of the hills almost reached across the ruffled surface of the river. The river bottoms at the base of the hills, with their waving grasses and tassled corn, extending beyond the bend in the river opposite Albany, the old wooden bridge farther up the river, the high hills behind him, presented a scene of beauty all of which was lost upon "Al-f-u-r-d." The boys in the river held him entranced. He was absorbed in the scene, and, for the moment, he even forgot his curls. Writers frequently refer to the Monongahela River as "murky"--but where's the boy who ever basked in its cooling waves who will not qualify the statement that its waters are the clearest, its depths the most delightful, its ripples the softest and its shores the smoothest? Jimmy Edmiston intimated to the writer that the Monongahela was only clear during a "Cheat River Rise." (Cheat is the name of a small stream of Virginia emptying into the Monongahela above Brownsville. Its waters are never muddy, no matter how heavy or protracted the rains along its course. When the Cheat River pours its transparent flood into the Monongahela the latter rises without riling. Hence the expression: "Cheat River rise.") Jimmy has so long lived away from Brownsville that his memory is defective. Associated with the muddy Missouri he labors under the delusion that all rivers are muddy--even the Monongahela.