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Show MILFORD FARMER AIDED MOVIE STAR ACTRESS SEEKS THE BENEFACTOR'S NAME On a winter's morning in 191C, a family consisting of man and wife, I a baby, three boys and a bhii.de-i bhii.de-i ha!!;igSf..Wy-wIo! li;venns!y out !,Jy,itV.A kind Tarn-.er gave them a "fc?Vot milk f'..r their breakfast.' j The- girl, Miss E.-ther RaTon, of motion-picture fame, now w"jfihes to know the name of the farmer who j aided the family that winter rr.orn-I rr.orn-I ing. She would like to have him communicate com-municate with her that she could return re-turn his hospi'.alitv. -; , Tiie-story, of. Miss Rsfcn's life. f which reais like fiction, was featured j lately in the St. Louis Star. An in-I in-I tereU'l reader at once corr.rr.unicatc-d with Postmaster C. T. Martin, of Mil-j Mil-j ford, in the hope that the name of the Milford farmer might be learned. The story of the theatrical family, drifting from place to place, is told by the following excerpt from the St. Louis Star: On a winter's morning in 1916 a cirl of 12 years who was characterized character-ized in the hand-bills circulated by , her father as "America's Greatest Juliet," crawled out of a haystack on a farm near Milford, Utah, yawned, stretched, and brushed the straw from her clothing. She was tall for her age, thin, long-legged and undernourished under-nourished and had yellow hair and tired blue eyes- The other members of the theatrical family had already left their straw-stack beds. The mother, whose beauty had long since faded, was seated on a dilapidated suitcase, nursing a baby; the father, whose shock of hair, serious mein and black frock coat market him as a tragedian tragedi-an of the old school, v.ns gazing toward to-ward the nearby farm house. Three boys, two younger than the girl, were shivering in the cold mountain air and one of them, whimpering, was insisting that he was very hungry hun-gry and could wait no longer for something to eat. "Patience, my son, patience," said the father. "The good farmer who tills this bit of land has promised the loan of a bucket of milk, and will be shortly. Ha J He comes now! Welcome, Wel-come, my good man, twice welcome. 'For this relief, much thanks.' " "Hamlet, act one, scene one," muttered mut-tered the little girl, solemnly. The family drank the milk, gathered gath-ered up the luggage, slipped through the wire fence, and started down the railroad tracks toward Milford. The mother carried the baby; the boys the suitcases, and the little girl an old bag, filled with Shakespearean swords- "Onward," said the father, "onward to Milford, where the gods will smile upon us and where we once again will be in funds. Let's hurry! 'He needs must go that the devil drives.' " " 'All's well that Ends Well,' Act once, scene three," muttered the little lit-tle girl. Miss R3lston Tells of their Wanderings Our trail across the continent took us to one small town after another. We would arrive in a village and. go to the depot. Mother, with Carleton, a nursing baby, and myself and my three brothers would remain in the station while papa went out and endeavored en-deavored to find a hall, or an insti- tution, where we could stage a show. "Many times we slept in the station sta-tion all night and I can tell how uncomfortable un-comfortable it was for me, a long-legged long-legged girl, trying to sleep on one of those station benches which had iron arms at regailar intervals. But it was better than sleeping out of dcors as we did frequently when the distance between towns was too great to cover in one day. "I remember Milford, Utah, where we slept in the haystacks, and the kind farmer who gave us the bucket of milk. If he should see this I hope he wiil communicate with me, for I'd like to return his hospitality. Esther Ralston today is immensely wealthy and her home is one of the finest in Hollywood, in contrast to the boarding house surroundings in which she once underwent hardships -of life as a chorus girl in a ten-and-twenty-cent burlesque troupe, and also as a cash girl in a department store- |