“I allers wanted children, an’ when I got too old to have the hope o’ ever a-marryin’, I used ter say ter myself: ‘Oh, ef they was only leetle grand-younguns now!’ Then the fortune come. Says I fust thing: ‘I’ll have a baby. I’ll be a granddaddy yit.’ Thar wa’n’t much mean about me. I be sixty-nine, but I wanted my own home, an’ my own wife, an’ my own baby. But I wanted the baby most of all. So the fust thing I done when the money come was ter go to that thar Margaret Jane Orphan Asylum an git this here baby. He hadn’t been there but a week. Jest lost his grandma an’ his grandpa—didn’t yer, yer pore leetle cuss, yer? He’s legally adopted. His name is Samuel Biggs Jessup, Jr. Ain’t he a wallopin’ fine feller!”
Samuel exploded at the last. His bashfulness, his self-depreciation, his afraidness, were all gone. He bent over, his hands on his knees, and looked into the baby’s face. The baby’s face was very close to Ellie’s. The baby’s face was dimpled and smiling, while over Ellie’s face there was a flush of joyous young motherhood together with the proud, all-wondering delight of grandmotherhood, and blending with both, a sweet shame and shrinking such as no one but a virgin can wear. Oh, exquisite, young-old Miss Ellie! Your eyes swimming in unshed tears were so beautiful then with the inner light that Samuel blinked to see them.
“Miss Ellie,” he whispered. Very still was the kitchen. The syringa outside the door shook out its perfume just for these two. The wind murmured through the fragrant flowers—it murmured:
“Again and again and again! Even for the old, this same old story!”
“Ellie,” whispered Samuel. “I want you even more than I want the baby. Will you marry me?”
Again the silence fell, and after a long while, the voice of Ellie’s dream-swept, ideal-keeping youth came from within the curves of the baby’s cheek where her lips were hiding:
“Samuel, you been a long time comin’.” Her voice faltered and then gathering a girlish tremor went on, “But, even ef you hadn’t brought the baby, I should say you was wuth all the waitin’.”
Control or Ownership?
BY CHARLES Q. DE FRANCE
Few men who have studied the question, and who are free to make a frank statement of their views, see much hope for a “square deal” in railroad rates under private ownership. Most of those who really want a square deal, however, are giving the President their moral support, not because they expect him to solve the problem with his formula of “control,” but because they feel that the agitation he has caused and is fomenting will inure to the benefit of the public ownership and operation idea. His opponents charge as much—and they are correct. Many of their arguments against control are valid, too, if we grant that private ownership in this age of our civilization is best. Of course, we do not grant that.