Evening Star Newspaper, June 9, 1929, Page 103

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTO_N. D. C, 1920—PART 7. 15 = - = —= —_— The Grand Old HEY were a grand old pair. That was how the local press eulo- gized them upon the celebration of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They deserved the appelaton. Their half century of life together had embodied all those qualities that go to solidify and enrich the human scene. Helen and Lazarus Bradstoop had builded well and tenanted their home with a family that they reared in harmony and uni- ‘son. Four girls and six boys were the issue of it. All, with the exception of two sacrificed to war, grown and out of the nest. Even the nest that had borne them had passed. With the marriage of their last child, Ailecn, to a French viscount, the old couple, responding to pressure, had agreed to give up the great brownstone family home and move into the compact quarters of an apartment hotel. It worked, too. They frankly enjoyed the new freedom from responsibility. The relief from the pressure of large household machina- tions. For the first time in almost half a cen- tury, Helen Lazarus found herself with time on her hands. For the first time in that period Lazarus, free of business and family burdens, felt himself at liberty to sun himsel! of a morn- ing in the large park opposite the hotel, or to drive with his wife through the wide, clean boulevards of the city, which he had seen de- velop from a straggling town into a Middle West metropolis. IT was touching to behold the gratitude of these two old ones for their new leisure. They used it to advantage, visiting their several mar- ried sons and daughters, driving with their grandchildren, re-establishing old social ties that had become neglected in the busy years of rearing fortune and family. When Helen was 65 and her husband 70, they took their first trip abroad, in the company of one of their older sons and his wife. It was a four-month tour and as Helen proud- ly related when they returned, their son and daughter-in-law had literally carried them about, so solicitous were they for the well-being and comfort of the parents. That was the attitude of the entire large family of Bradstoops. Helen and Lazarus had reached a time of life when they were entitled to the good things. The Bradstoop children, by tacit agreement, saw to it, each and severally, that their parents should come into a rich old age. To grow old like the Bradstoops, surrounded by love, giving it, receiving it, secure in one another, and in the ministrations of the huge and devoted family, was the kind of thing the beholder unconsciously coveted for his own and for himself. Every year when the family met at Christ- mas, around a table that seated 40, even a stranger looking in might have felt his heart strain as he saw; strain with a sense of the beauty of this spectacle of family well-being. For that is what it was, a scene diffused with the warmth of many hearts beating high around the nucleus of a pair of parents who had build- ed well. And now, we come to what must reluctantly be termed the fly in the ointment. If there was one flaw in the perfect family sequence, it centered around the charming and personable figure of Aileen Bradstoop, who had married the viscount and moved to Paris. THE Bradstoops, with unanimity, had op- posed that marriage of the baby of the family to Leland Le Conte, young aviator who had gravitated to St. Louis, as that city was by way of becoming an aviation center of the world. Aileen and Le Conte met at a country club, became engaged that same evening and 10 days later were married with an ado of social flurry, to say nothing of the consistent, if repressed, opposition of the Bradstoop family. Le Conte was bonafide as to connection, all right. The third son of an ancient if decadent Alsatian family, impecunious, reckless, high- strung, but all in all, in the opinion of the Bradstoops and their friends, jugt the man for the correspondingly high-strung Aileen not to marry. A word about Aileen. Born six years after the ninth child, she had been from the start, & special kind of a youngster. Erratic, strangely lovely in a blonde fashion that was distinctly a departure from the Bradstoop olive tints, and with blue eyes that glittered like ice in the sun. Countless were the secret conferences held by her parents over this elusive sprite, their child. Her mother feared her a bit and where a repri- mand would suffice for one of the other chil- dren, with Aileen it was always a matter of knowing just how to handle her. ‘The old gentleman Bradstoop, a disciplinarian after a fashion, although a kind one to the letter, shied off a bit, too, where Aileen was concerned. In the phraseology of the St. Louis of this period, people said that Aileen “had her family bluffed.” They deferred to her. She was a swan in a barnyard. A special breed. An exotic in a just ordinary garden. For instance, in a community where smoking was still a vice for a woman, Aileen at 18 flaunt- ed the weed, defying parental remonstrance and threatening to smoke in the public parks #f the home were forbidden her. Aileen won. At 19 she openly went to the room of one of the town’s well known bachelors, entered un- announced and informed the flabbergasted con- servative that she had arrived for tea. SHE was not of the yielding, passive, contend- ed breed of her sisters, was forever getting herself talked about in one boisterous capacity after another, and at one time was reported to have eloped with the family chauffeur. So, unwelcome as the viscount marriage was, it was with some relief that the Bradstoops saw her safely enmeshed in a marriage that at least carried with it the undeniable tincture of re- Pair By Fannie Hurst The Bradstoop home is going again full blast, and the children of Aileen race in and out. Here, Fannie Hurst, Known as the Highest Paid Short Story Writer in the World, Tells of the Bradstoop Family and How the Parents «Lost the Eight of This Is First Publication of This Story. Years.” spectability, even though young Leland was known for a certainty to be anything but con- servative. He was a young man somehow, who seemed foreordained. There was a transient quality about Leland. You expected catastrophe to overtake him, one way or another. It was in his cards. It was in his eyes. Ten years after his marriage to Aileen it did. And of all ironic accidents! Leland, the dare- devil, the act, the aviator; Leland, who loved fast horses and fast polo, was to die in bed of blood poison from an infected finger nail. Six months later there returned to America, practically penniless, Aileen and her four chil- dren, two robust boys and a pair of frail girl twins. The cuick and stormy and impetuous years had left their mark on Alleen. Leland had broken her, as the saying goes. Her spirit lay a dead thing within her. Gone was the ice- glitter from her eyes, and the shoulders of Aileen, the lovely creamy shoulders that had always defied, were tamed somehow. It was a different Aileen who came home. A rather heart-hurting edition of her former self. . Leland has fulfilled the Bradstoop prophecies. Gradually it was all to come out. Not so much from what Aileen was ever to say. But piece by piece by piece, the whole sordid story was unconsciously to reproduce itself before her family. Leland had been a rotter, both as a husband and a father. His children had lived in terror What Their Signatures Tell Continued from Third Page. solutely independent mentally and cannot be coerced. There are many delightful human qualities shown in the writing of the Postmaster Gen- eral, Walter F. Brown. He is extremely kind and thoughtful for inferiors, loves children, is sympathetic and generous, has a pleasant, cheerful disposition and enjoys all the simple, homelike pleasures of life. But do not imagine that he is colorless, by any means. His mental qualities are as well developed as his human. His mind is versatile and very inquiring, logical and capable of complete absorption in the business of the moment. His taste is excellent, he is a shrewd judge of character and has a tenacious will. His signature shows a distinct element of caution and he is likely to be con- servative in his opinions. To the graphologist the writing of Charles F. Adams, Secretary of the Navy, comes as a surprise, for the newspaper reports at the time of his appointment said his manner was reserved and severe, and his writing contra- dicts that opinion flatly. Maybe that manner is camouflage, a protective armor, for he is really a very sociable being, fond of congenial company, quick in repartee and possessing a very delightful wit. His writing also tells us that he is always willing to help the under dog, has much originality, delights in reading and in good English and has a very wide range of intellectual interests. His well known love of the sea is shown in that wide-looped “f” and the exaggeratedly long logp of the “g,” but the quick, uneven spurts of pen pressure tell of a nervous temperament which may, at times, be decidedly irritable. The occasional breaks between the letters of a word show intuition and the peculiarly brittle look of the writing denotes a quick, highly strung temperament, Is not that of Ray Lyman Wilbur a charac- teristic signature? Any one could tell from it that the Secretary of the Interior has the sci- entific mind of the professional type, for these small letters, combined with the comparatively high capitals and connected words, always indi- cate a trained mentality. The simplicity of the letters, made in the shortest and most direct manner, shows efficiency; the peculiarly drawn- out appearance of the words and these long terminals with their sharply hooked ends reveal a certain eager impatience, together with te- nacity. This very individual writing shows strength to overcore opposition, an assertive person- ality and much creative imagination. Secretary Wilbur has courage and ambition, but he is not of the haii-fellow-well-met type. He is slow to make friends or to give his confidence, but he is intensely loyal to those friends whom he has once chosen. THL‘ Secretary of Agriculture, Arthur M. Hyde, has an ingratiating manner which should enable him to pacify all the warring farm groups, and he would delight in doing it, for he loves to help others. Look at that “y,” the extended word terminals and open “m,” all indicative of friendliness and kindness. He enjoys music, color, beauty in all forms, and, though he has much ambition, has little or no personal vanity. He is logical, even tempered, sincere and has a far-sighted vision which en- ables him to plan for the future. There is much personal magnetism shown in the writing of Secretary of Labor Jjames J. Daviss He has an abounding self-confidence, talks well, is impulsive, friendly and intensely interested in people. He is the real “joiner” type, expansive, full of zest for life, expressing his emotions frankly and enjoying everything—- music, company, sports and all the pleasures of life. He is receptive, adaptable, tenacious and as- sertive, has much energy and courage, greatly appreciative of culture and mental ability and is altogether of a vital type. With this char- acter, it is no® surprising that he thoroughty enjoys formal affairs and the pomp of ritual and pageantry, as well as taking pleasure in more simple homeclike joys. Taking the writing of the cabinet as a whole, we may safely say that it is distinctly Amseri- can, but how true the individual delineations are I have no way of knowing. of him. That was what had broken Aileen, Leland had once struck his little 4-year-old twins in a drunken fury. There had been 8 o scar along one small arm for months. His sons had cringed from him. These small children had come to know terror early. The pain of that was graven into the face and heart of Aileen. And Aileen brought home with her one desire; indeed, it might be said that Aileen brought home with her one obsession. She wanted for these pallid children of hers the kind of youth she had known in the old brown family man- sion of her childhood. She not only wanted for them that kind of youth, but the identical setting. She wanted .the old house on Pine street which her parents had long since sold to a Catholic school and which was now used as the dwelling place of 12 monks who conducted the institution. At first the idea seemed too fantastic even to bear discussion. The brothers and sisters of Aileen rose in a unanimous mass against the idea of the parents ever being asked to resume any of ‘:}j: duties of home and household. It must also be said that Helen and Lazaru$ themselves, who were contemplating a long« dreamed trip to the Orient, drew away from the prospect. IN a way, Aileen bowed her head before the selfishness of her demands and the unanime ity of the decision against her. She took up her residence, at the willing bounty of her fame ily, in the same hotel with her parents. There her children, strange youngsters reared in the French tradition, sought to adapt themselves to new environment. There, Alleen, so sobered that there was pathos in her very aspect, sought to cause to shine upon these starveling offspring of hers some of the radiance of the kind of childhood that had been hers. In a way she succeeded. Even in the hotel environment Helen and Lazarus were to fill & niche in the lives of their grandchildren that was vital and important. They lived in closest proximity, the grande parents part of the very fabric of each day. And yet there came a time when Helen realized that there was to be no trip to the Orient, no continuance of the carefree life that contained no household worries, no problems of upkeep. Aileen’s children needed a home. Each and every one of the brothers and sisters rallled around to combat the detremination, even Aileen herself protesting as she contem- plated the worn, lined faces of her parents. But in the end it was the determination of Helen, finally aided and abetted by Lazarus, that won the day. At no small difficulty the Bradstoops sue- ceeded in buying the brown old home on Pine street back from the monks, who surrendered it reluctantly, but succumbed to the pressure brought to bear. The Bradstoop home is going again full blast. Tradespeople hurry in and out during its busy days, general housecleaning comes and goes, and the children of Aileen race in and out, to school, from school, on roller skates, on roller . coasters. L4 The grandparents are as hard put as they ever were in their lives. The house is filled with the hurry of feet, the demands of small voices, the cries of childish altercation. Helen is beside herself with duties; Lazarus full of mild scolding ways and admonitions to grandchildren. There is no time for travel. Alleen has finally succeeded in bringing home to her brothers apd sisters the fact that with all their trials, the years have fallen away from her parents in a fushion that is amazing: Secretly Alleen blesses her capucity for al- ways managing to get her own way. (Famcapint sann