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Show HAVE YOU AN ACRE OF DIAMONDS? There's only one section of this country coun-try or of any other where "Miss Millie" would be a title of love and honor and distinction. Miss Millie, Mildred Lewis Rutherford undoubtedly was when, as a little girl, she pored over lessons at a beautiful solid mahogany ma-hogany school desk. Miss Millie she was at eighteen, when the world began to open before her, especially the gracious gra-cious world of art and travel that the "Old South" liked to. give its girls. And Miss Millie she still is, to an ever wider and more appreciative group, when, as president of the Lucy Cobb Institute of Athens, Ga., she guides other girls at the same precious old mahogany desks of her own girlhood. It's been a life, she insists, lacking In the dramatic qualities that would make other girls want to read about hers. But is it so commonplace to be able to see value in the very things that have been familiar through all the years? Not only to see that value, but to preserve it, to make it yield a living to oneself and a service to many others? oth-ers? This Is the essence of Miss Millie's achievement. Not long ago some of the hard-headed members of the Athens Ath-ens Chamber of Commerce went out to see whether there was really anything much out there at the old school. They found "big double reception parlors, furnished elegantly, but more like a comfortable home than the formal entry of an educational institution." They found the "George I. Seney collection col-lection of oils and water colors," pictures pic-tures "of the old Cobb home, and of Lucy Cobb herself, rescued from the home of a family of erstwhile Cobb Bervents," historic furniture with legends of some of the best of southern south-ern culture adding to Its luster, together togeth-er with "model apartments for teachers' teach-ers' quarters and bathrooms everywhere," every-where," that appealed to their manlike souls. So they went back to their offices. And they picked out the member who had the gift of gab and asked him to write up what they'd seen. He started his story with the tale of the Chautauqua lecture on "Acres of Diamonds." Remember it? Thr farmer who sold out and went to search for gold, while the wise man who bought the farm found a dia moid mine when he scritchet the worn hillside. |