Judge — September 22, 1906 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HEN the business day was over and the lights were lit in the peaceful valley town that lay at the foot of the hill, it was an unfailing sign of the hour that Colonel Denby Grier should come, in a slow dignified fashion, out of the great door of the hill house and, seating himself in a big, roomy porch chair light a long cigar which glowed through the evening like a great rosy firefly in the soft dark. From my window, a little farther down on the opposite side of the street, I have watched the old banker countless times as he sat there tilted back, his foot against one of the huge colonial pillars, and on the steps descending to the terraced lawn before him would be the dim group of white and color, his three daughters and some of their friends. Perhaps the tall, graceful, slender white figures moving about among the peony beds would be Grace and Caro- lyn, the older girls, while the animated elf that always clung close to her father’s place in the evening time was certain to he Mildred, the child who in that day was shyly entering the myst-rious world of womanhood. But no matter where they were dispersed at dusk, the later dark always found them clustered about their father’s feet, and ever and anon till a late hour | could hear his resonant, drawling voice in one of those stories which had made him famous throughout the state. The last time 1 was in Virginia I passed up the street and by the door of the old mansion, 1 stopped abruptly as it came into view above the thicket of lilac bushes that hedged the lower corner of the ground. A ruthless, marring hand seemed to have wiped from its prospect all of its rare old spirit, charm, and beauty. The imposing white gateposts with their capitals were gone. The peony beds lay fallow, the steps were sagged, the pillars were hacked and scarred, the walks and the terraces sadly unkempt, and the sign of a boarding-house hung before the open door. The familiar chair and its venerable occupant, the master of the house, the gay friends, and the stately daughters were gone. I knew the story well. I was informed of each detail of the thing that had befallen the family fon the lee shore, for the wreck is spoken of to this day in all the region, and so I was, I thought, fully prepared for'the sight of the place, but I confess that I stopped short with a quick choke and stood for a moment looking abstractedly at the ghost of what had been, It was the final chapter in a long lesson of protection of all that any man loves from what may befall it when he is no longer able to stand between his dearest and most treasured and the steady march of attacking circumstance, I am going to tell this story with its two wings that touch in conclusion. In fact, in these latter days it has seemed to me that there was a commanding excuse for its being wri ten, and now it shall be set down, perhaps spread broadcast, and may it do the good that seems to me to lie within its scope. I first knew the old colonel and his attractive family through his sister, one of the finest types of the Southern gentlewom.n it has ever been my privilege to encounter. She had married a New York broker, Edward Raymond, sprung of Connecticut Yankee stock, and a mem- ber of one of the best known firms in Wall Street. Their house on Madison Avenue was one in which the gracious, unobtrusive hos- pitality of the South was blended perfectly with the exact and brilliant life habits of New York. There one met people who were distinctly interesting on their own account, and with Mrs. Raymond the power to attract a coterie which any woman of society might envy was never used for any purposes of family aggrandizement, but was merely recog nized as the factor that brought to her door the friends about whom she really cared. Her days at home were a pleasure, where with other hostesses they might have been regarded as mildly unfortunate but necessary occasions. Raymond in those days was, outside of his home, a hard, boli man’of business, intent on building up a great fortune. Ihave been in his office at more than one critical hour on ‘Change when he sat at his desk, quietly giving brief, succinct orders, whose success or failure meant almost everything to him, and yet his voice never seemed to change in those times, his kindly eyes rarely lifted from the papers before him, his unlit cigar was set at a precise right angle to the firm line of his mouth and jaw, and when his hands passed to execute some detail, to pick up a pen or a telephone receiver, they moved with the steady manner that meant certainty combined with wonderful alert- ness, He was the highest type of the efficient American business man ON THE LEE SHORE. BY BROUGHTON BRANDENBURG. in the crux of battle. When the crisis was over he would lean back, strike a match slowly, light his cigar, and let his mouth relax in an easy smile. This picture of him in that day I have drawn in this manner because | must pair it with another and a sailly different one later on. One evening, at a club dinner, he met Senator J shn F. Dryden, of ew Jersey, the head of the Prudential Life Insurance Company, and they spent some little time in the discussion of conservative New Eng- land investments in which both were deeply interested. .R ymond in telling me of the occurrence next day said! “Thad alw s thought of insurance as a sound business, goo enough for those whose families are dependent on their efforts, also the cause of a violent mania which possessed certain persons called agents and evidenced principally by an unfailing persistence. No fersonal application of it had ever occurred tome. Of insurance officials I have had little acquaintance and mentally pigeon-holed th as benevolent old gentlemen who would not discount twenty-dollar gold pieces under thirty days’ notice, but in the Senator I found a man of fire and steel, just as keen as I or anyone I know in the accomplish- ment of his hands and brains, and within himself a perfect business dynamo, well governed anil secure. Now, you know every man stands for a principle in his life work. Senator Dryden impressed me won- U, S. SENATOR JOHN F. DRYDEN President of The Prudential Insurance Company of America. dertully and I decided to do honor to his principle, the principle of sound life insurance, { asked a triend to do me the favor of finding out for me if | could get written up for twenty-five thousand in his company.” It was not a difficult matter, Raymond beins physically what is termed a good risk; in fact, when [ knew him many years Liter he still seemed such in every way. The policy was of the twenty-year endow- ment sort, and, as indicated above, was taken out in the Prudential Company. It was merely a matter of chance that Raymond took this step, and I know to « certainty that he forgot it completely only at stated periods, because matters, seemingly, a score of times of more im- portance were constantly before him. Quite different were the events which form the connecting link between this consideration and the pathetic story of the Griers. ‘The old colonel was of that provincial type of business man with an ancient style of letter book, and to whom the conduct of no deal was so important as to prevent the introduction of some long, whim- sical, highly irrelevant darkey story. He drove down to the bank an comicbooks.com