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Show found in seaports. He dabbled in adventure more hazardous than sailing skiffs on the North Atlantic: playing cards for small stakes. Then larger ones. Gambling became a passion, sometimes he couldn't lay aside the cards until late at night. He might creep into his bedroom without being observed or he used the excuse that the boys' choir at the Domkirke had to stay late to master new difficult music. The inevitable occurred. The stakes increased but luck was not always with him. A day came when a raffish young wastrel swaggered into the ship store and demanded that Ferdinand pay a gambling debt his son could not pay. Alfred's Father threw the young roughneck out and summoned his son. "How long has this been going on?" he shouted in his best army officer manner. Alfred had to tell all. Actually, he told me when I_ was a teenager, confession was a relief. He had been reared to be honest and conscientious, and the lying and gambling had given him painful guilt feelings. Also he could see the fallacy of handing out money to worthless spendthrifts with no return. Alfred's parents were anxious about him. What would become of him? They proposed apprenticing him to a master cabinet maker or ship-builder. Alfred had shown a knack for fashioning furniture and he loved boats. But he had larger dreams, He wished to go to America and study medicine. Knowing his zest for reading, his parents encouraged him in that ambition. So in his 18th year he signed on as a cabin boy in a freighter to work his passage to the New World. Thus he saved his meager store of money for the train trip from New York to Iowa. There he found colonies of Scandinavians, some of them former friends of his father. Now came a long period of toil and saving. He had to work, his way through college, through, medical school. At first he could obtain only-manual labor on farms. He had to improve his English and lay foundations in pre-medical knowledge. |