The Dallas Journal, Volume 46, 2000 Page: 18
118 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Autobiography of Charles V. Compton by Don Raney
son of Dr. J. S. Brown, took me as a partner to sweep out and clean the school rooms for the entire term, at $3.50 a
week. He could not have found a better partner for the job, if you will pardon my disposition to brag, but I liked the
money and cared nothing for the effort it took.
A complication arose later in the term. Miss Wordlow, a beautiful and talented lady, arranged to teach her school of
elocution and oratory in a school room after school closed each day. This interfered with our work. Secretly, we would
have preferred to have been members of her class, rather than the janitors. She would teach her pupils the proper tones
and methods of expression. One of the favorite quotations was "Beautiful Stream Is the River of Time," and another, a
military command, "Onward Twenty Four."
One afternoon about five, Russ, disgusted with the heat and the dust that enveloped us, stuck his head out of the door
and, in a tone very much like Miss Wordlow, yelled to me, "Beautiful stream is the river of time." Knowing that it was
about time to shift to the last room, I answered, "On to number four!" loud and eloquently so that the teacher and the
entire class got the drift of our audacity. We were reported to the school board and the they called us in. Russ was tired
of his job and did not need it as bad as I did, so he refused to apologize and we lost our positions.
Russ and I continued to sit at the same old desk. We both disliked grammar, especially diagraming and made low grades
in mathematics and history. I'll digress here to say that Russ was a good dancer and was a wonder with a ukelele. He
was prominent in social circles, finished school, married a fine girl, moved to Houston and became one of the leading
architects and builders in Texas. When I met him years later at a summer resort and publicly announced that he served
as a janitor of the school building in my home town, he laughingly said, yes and you were my partner.18~~~ ~ Th als ora
The Dallas Journal
18
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Dallas Genealogical Society. The Dallas Journal, Volume 46, 2000, periodical, June 2000; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth186859/m1/24/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Genealogical Society.