| Show A E ua e A story r with th a blessing lessing t B by PHOE PHOEBE B E GRAY copyright by small maynad company SY SYNOPSIS 12 trundling the clean washing up upper hill mary alice brown Is set up aby in by some mischievous boys who spill he washing eL shing into the dirt she Is rescued ud tod taken to her home in calvert street ay francis wallett Wll wl lett ilett a galahad knight ay foe be Is punished by her drunken father for or without the wash money mary illace c 0 wanders away from ho home takes ft a arll rolley 0 i ey ride into the country and spends ahe he night at the farmhouse of 0 sam thomie in the morning she bhe meets little charle thomas a cripple sam takes mary biary alice home and finds that he and mrs drown are old acquaintances sam takes ler and mary alary alice to his homo home foe or a halt t while lem brown the drunken father faher Is 19 serving a workhouse sentence salle I 1 Is made a galahad knight franks Is visits the farm and Is saed sax ed from Irow tr owning nine by mary alice lem brown out of 0 jail and goes to work tor for sam am thomas rhomas as hired man mail francis willett a sent bent away to preparatory school mary vilce mice gets a job in a department ep a r t ent store rhe he have a wonderful wonder nd e r tul I 1 christ nas dinner lem brown shows signs or of laform john winett willett refuses to enter political loli campaign against the liquor ele hent bent doctor jackson examines charlie lut makes no deflin ite promise of a core there seem to be compensations for lack of riches the musician music fan the poet the artist the missionary the man who gives his life to the service of humanity these want no riches only enough for comfort and unless the rich man gives some of himself to others something of service and personal sacrifice he loses the best in life it CHAPTER vill continued I 1 it often happens that way said fackson 1 I had already guessed as touch buch now if you think you wish the treatment Teat ment to be given it if you feel that TO ou u want to take the risk I 1 can assure toy that there la is very good ground to ope lope that in two or three more years our boy oy will w have ave a pair of 0 fairly je sable isable legs not you understand per estly normal but sound enough tor for a ie ea amount of locomotion and mother result will be a much more stable cable ani and rugged health than he be can iver ver attain unless this condition Is re cleved i martha asked some timorous ques lons with the divine selfishness of she would perhaps have clasped her boy tight and fought off the lie shining hope of deliverance if it east cast a shadow of ill chance les ask charlie said sam hes pretty old headed besides hes the one most concerned lie ile led the way into the sitting room where charlie sat contemplating his newly awakened vision charlie dear said martha did doctor jackson tell you he might make you rou well hes goin to said the boy but did he be say that that the things lie he does to boys dont always work york its ita goin to work with me did you understand that it Is a ng hard struggle and that there rould be lots of 0 pain il 1 I understand im goin coln to have a pair ci 0 legs and I 1 can bear the aln ain cause gods fixin up a plan about it and if its part 0 the plan jor or meto have palo pain all right its the begs 99 im after say boss let me ask ou u so methin Sp osin you was I 1 oat lost fat t on a prairie and you have iny y water for a long icing time lind and your angue gue swelled up and your eyes bulged 9 out and you was fit to perish bcd d spose somebody come along and aid id boss heres a nice cool drink 0 ced d tea do you want it and spose wi u said yes and the fetter feller with the ca a says well cor cost A you all the goney oney you got you hayw say cost be said sam prompt r I 1 tW hat do I 1 care for a little pain em the boy what im sees 98 ill fix it up with god about the stain in ajohn KJ john ohn said dr william jackson as he e automobile took them swiftly between een spreading fields of sno snow toward ef field do you know it Is an elpe t nce ence like this that makes life worth ving to me think of 0 the joy of bell ig g able to hold out a little hope to ose lose people to know that it Is more t lan an probable that you will be able to ve that amazing cherta the one thing t 8 wants k you tou say it Is more than probable the percentage of successful cases i growing greater I 1 purposely showed eo ie 0 dark side of the picture to those eople ale one promise too much j 3 that I 1 said to them was true there danger there Is a percentage of falles which must not be ignored he looked thoughtfully off across entry to where a range of moun ians no rose blue and hazy and delicate edged with gleaming lee ice ile he was linking liking of little sir galahad as all B called charlie and he be was thinking 1 his 1118 own quest and the holy grail 0 the end and the heartening odor of hopeful helpful minin stry to pain S liach came hafting wafting down the hill of abt up which ile he climbed so sturdily i jle wondered how much wealth it took p compensate a business man like illert lett for want of that almost fanatic r alt atlon which only the idealist can 6 tow 1 and then it occurred to him that perhaps john willett did not realize that be had bad such a need perhaps john wll wit lett thought himself an idealist anyhow and ana tills this made doctor jackson smile for he be had known willett a great many years CHAPTER IX auer after six years A broad all flight ht of flat steps led up and up to th the e wide flung portals of minot house ascending these you unconsciously elevated your chin for as you climbed the great columns of that stately porch held beld your eye minot house was the parthenon where a thousand devotees made obeisance to all the gods of education minot was lead dead and lived again in the spirit which pervaded the house of ills his splendid endowment minot born poor lived and died to enrich Slie sheffield ffield with the magnificence of tits his idea rearing a free university for the people a temple to the spirit of helpfulness and self reliance if you could not learn a thing at minot house hous e it was because you were but the pupils were of a high order of since they went there with wl ali one idea to learn lea rn no social distinction attached to the student at minot house and if you y ou fancied such a distinction before you entered you dropped the notion promptly or minot house dropped you however when you graduated you found yourself in possession of the more profitable distinction of efficiency minot house was a citizen factory it worked two shifts long after other industries closed their eyes for the night ni bt lights blazed from the windows of minot not house only one type of enterprise ter prise vied tied with it in the matter of business hours and that was oddly enough the saloon whose function was to destroy while minot house pro Learning the rudiments of art deuced citizens it should be said that the minot product offered poor pickings tor for that sort of competition up the flight of broad flat steps now climbed a boy a boy with a face eager and alert andla and a quantity of blond hair flair that waved and twisted all over his bis head in insubordinate curls e he walked with an odd slightly uneven gait which seemed to y you oil at first to require conscious effort but which you presently discovered to be as effective a means of locomotion as the average ills feet were smaller than common for a boy of his age and his legs noticeably slender but he be could walk easily and rapidly As he was as between thirteen and fo fourteen arteen years ea ra old there was no reason to doubt OU t that at with his hia general grow growth I 1 III hla legs would more and more approach roa the e normal Cli charlies ariles legs were the only limping thing about him ills his brain cantered to say the least where most brains plodded and he bad developed an as ic tonis onis bing and cat catholic holle dexterity this thia bad become emphasized from the time he be bad begun to play with the new drawing outfit on a memorable christmas night every day of his life from that time he be had bad drawn and drawn and drawn the weird results of first attempts gave place to work that showed the promise of the future ills his perspective was masterfully distorted tits his chiaroscuro a patchwork of tangled shadows but here and there in a face in the poise of a head bead or sn in the grace and truth of gesture even of some crude caricature there was a flash of talent almost blinding in iii its revelation the revelations contained in the boys crude sketches of people were so io startling that lie he grew to dread them ue he wanted to like everybody to confide to in everybody to believe the best of everybody he would take up a current magazine and finding in it the portrait of some man in the public eye would swiftly copy it in a few strokes the results were striking and often totally unexpected if you yon tool took a series of these little sketches and wrote under each the suggested attribute in the teai tures you would write such words as aa these against the name of 0 a great philanthropist egotism against that of a man whose reputation for political adroitness had become nation wide benevolence against that of a great captain of industry innocence against that of nt a certain little man who for twenty years had bad worked humbly among his brethren of the slums courage charlie himself could foretell no more than could the person at his elbow what verdict the pencil would re render n lie ile preferred not to make so hazardous a test yet there was always ru an uncanny fascination in the experiment when his friends and acquaintances formed the subjects he came to shrink from this adventurous portraiture tra iture and drove his pencil to other ends charlie entered minot house when he was thirteen sam tool took him there one morning in early fall dally daily with his fits happy face glowing with the zest of life in its frame of blond curls and his odd deceptively y hesitant gait be trod the academic path ile he made little difficulty with the studies outlined oil for him but be was utterly blissful only when he worked in one of the great sky lighted studios learning the rudiments of art by means of the cube the cylinder and the block hand with its flat planes of light and shadow the life of melnot house got into tills this boys blood of all the pupils whose ages ranged from his own to that of the average person at college graduation not one lacked the incentive of a definite goal mary alice he would say at ml not house a kind of galahad knight they dont all know it but all on a quest of the grail maybe it the same grail for everybody ery body but I 1 guess it amounts to the same thing charlie youre a wonder said uary mary alice 1 I never saw such an old headed beaded child mary alice was nineteen she had been through high school and thought lier her education was vas complete she WM was back in the gloves at stachys staceys Stac Stace cys ys minnie and sadie and grace had long since gone the uncharted ways of matrimony mary alice used to look up at the freckled little face in the armed turret where she herself had bad formerly done up packages and the sales slips and money and wonder in what other ways the bundle girls life paralleled her own the six years which had made a poised young woman out of the little girl whom francis willett had called skinny had bad certainly robbed her of no fraction of her good looks look a leni leai brown stood more in awe of his handsome daughter than ever you imagine mary alice hauling a cartload of washing up clipper nill and lem ama imagine ine himself issuing any orders that she se was in the least bound to respect and yet he had never since the days of his rehabilitation expressed a wish which she had not met promptly and cheerfully lem was and always would be a private soldier and a good one ile he never would be an officer in any kind of army ile he had taken orders from sam thomas since the very beginning of their relation which was still that of man and master lem knew as much about sams business of dairying as the boss sometimes sam would compliment lem by telling him he sure get along without him and lem would always answer oh I 1 dont know I 1 guess you could he was tas a glutton for work ile he saved sam the he necessity of hiring extra help except at al L harvest time and sam was just ile he paid lem not on a day labor basis but in proportion to tits his own prosperity the little white house had not only plenty of green grass it had flowers in beds rioting in it old fashioned profusion and c carefully are fully tended vines that flamed with color in season ason lorn lem had bad money in the bank sometimes sam would walk out on oil a sunday afternoon and stand on top of the rocky knoll in the old pasture lot ile he would survey his well tilled acres with a soothing sans satisfaction faction then hla his eye strayed along toward the five acre corner piece where stood the brown cottage which lem had bought and nearly paid for in another two years lenas lems title would be all tree free and clear sam could see little dick brown sitting sifting on the back porch with his father 1 I did that sam would say to himself marthy and charlie and me we took that lump jump ol 01 0 mud mua and made a man of it it if I 1 never do another things long as I 1 live I 1 guess nobody can say I 1 helped this old world a little lordy lem a mess them first three or four months love and a square toed boot a win combination all right then his eye would swing oft off nowara toward sheffield where the lazy vapors of banked fires lay drifting over the city theres only two things in that town I 1 got any real respect for said sam to martha one day the clipper hill hospital and minot house in redeeming lem brown do you believe that sam thomas has made amends for the days of his unrighteousness and for the pain and sorrow he brought j to others rf remt MT TO BE CONTINUED |
