W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

took into his confidence concerning this low point in his affairs. "I had trouble passing the exits with the change box," Fields said. "Sometimes, without thinking, I'd go out one revolving door and come back in another. It was a difficult time for a selfrespecting thief." Like Huckleberry Finn at the Widow Douglas's, Fields made an honest effort to become civilized, but, as Twain's hero said, "it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways." Fields got fidgety in the evenings ; occasionally he slipped out and went to a saloon. The garnering of fifty cents' worth of free lunch for a nickel ginger ale usually put him right — it restored his faith in himself. During this season of his employment he was aware of a basic anxiety that hung over him like a thundercloud. He felt that his fingers, despite the free lunch, were apt to grow rusty through the interruption of his stealing. In his spare moments he again took up juggling, which had been a latent passion with him since his visit to the Byrne Brothers. In his grandmother's back yard, in barns, in stables, in any place where he might work in peace, he kept the objects flying. Cut off as he was from Dukinfield's supply of spherical edibles, he sought other things to juggle. On Sundays he hung around the municipal tennis courts. When a ball sailed over the backstop, Fields grabbed it and ran. He begged cigar boxes from tobacconists, he lifted croquet balls from quiet lawns, he borrowed Indian clubs from gymnasiums, and he dug utensils out of scrap heaps. It was priceless training, for he was learning to juggle objects of every possible shape. Through the dark hours of his regeneration, his practice never flagged. There came a day at the beginning of the spring thaws when Fields' grandmother recognized the inevitable truth — the job was too big; the boy couldn't be civilized. They parted, on 27