Show the old settler my illy dear san Jua ners two little girls played around him and called him daddy as lie he woi worked iced with the hoe and he answered them with all the tenderness of a father for his own children yet they were not his children I 1 nor his grandchildren he I 1 was well past his seventieth year I 1 and his hair was white as wool I 1 one of the little girls was a navajo 1 the other was a neighbors child who had come to play still other children navajo children and white children made the place look like a school zone they all called him daddy they all loved him and he loved every one of them three of the little navajo boys were noisy and destructive tive and brimming with life yet they had respect to the words of the white haired daddy and he saw in them much of the good and little of the evil how come while he tended the water and hoed hoe d the weeds there in the garden he wore the big apron that he wore in the kitchen for he cooked and washed and kept house for the two little girls and their appearance neat and clean bespoke not only his love for them but his good taste unusual ability and his ing care im both father and mother to em he smiled when asked about it and in his cracked old voice there was the rich tone of that best of all human emotion which unites all mankind as brothers and sisters and makes them the children of one great father well it was this way he had been a merchant all his life in a little town near joplin missouri his daug ther had come west and worked as a nurse and as a teacher among the navajos cavajos Nava jos when the old mans wife had finally been worn out by a lingering disease the old man in his loneliness had come to live with his daughter the daughter with an inherent love in her heart for all mankind worked in a hospital where a helpless tiny infant required special care to maintain a life hold continued on page 8 the old settler continued Continue ct irom page 1 on its tangle of skin and bone when the little creature had i 1 fought its way to a point where chez Is 1 it was a cooing baby instead of a crying skeleton behold there wes neither father nor mother to claim it or care for it right there the od mans daughter could not be true to her beuer better self without taking the baby for her own so in spite of the many public activities devolving upon her she took the little navajo as her own child later on when another motherless navajo girl cung ching I 1 to her and raised a plaintive appeal se something thing in her great heart would not let her turn away and she adopted this girl too when her old father came lone and lonely having given up his h i s home and his bus to li live venear near her and when she called him daddy the two little navajo girls knew him by no other name when they found in his tired tire d old soul the same dependable love they had found in his daughter they adopted him as their daddy and he accepted them as his c own wn responsibilities rested still on his daughter and when business called her away much of the time the oli old daddy cared for the little girls and their friends in a way not greatly different to the one who said suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not ALBERT R LYMAN |