The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-16
HALF AN HOUR AGAINST
 YEARS.

l When John Hemphill was twenty
 one years old he fell in love with his | employers daughter. That would not have been So bad. because many young fellows had tallen in love and got over 1t. Unfortunately he told her about 1t. and she told her father, and ] he told Hemphili to go elsewhere lie | went away from the town and county and State and took up his burden in a
 strange community. Here he pros pered. being a person of brain and grit. At 30 he was worth $20O,ooo' al 35 half million; at 40 more than million; and at 45 more than he could tell without careful calculation SIX importing was his line and there was not a better judge of the true oriental. or French product in America.
 He said to himself that he had more than enough money and there was no need for further work. A silent, gloomy man. with the impress of his early dis appointment bitten into him, he had not thought of marriage. He lived In big house on a hill that overlooked the bay. He had three men servants and not a woman about the place. The house was a palace. but Its owner, de- prived of the stress of business. was on the road to insanity. He did not knOW tnls. put II was true.
 He sat by the fire one late autumn night and communed with himself. What is 1t all worth?" he asked of the warm air about him. Why all the long years of strain and endeavor to amass? Why the constant watching of rivals and the numerous tricks of trade? What have they brought me? l have money yes; but after all man can eat only q certain amount of food and wear a certain amount of clothing, sleep only for a certain number of hours and devote only another certain number to exercise. All of this could be done on q thousand a year. When am dead the millions will go to some charity house which will remember my name and that is all. There is | nothing in 1t. Yet I believe that every
 man has the right to happiness, to
 woman's warm kisses. to the love and prattle of children. The desire to re-
 produce our kind is one of the strong est desires. I have had it through all
 my weary life. Children are to be had through marriage. yet do l know a | woman to whom I would trust myself: 1 give my freedom. little as it is worth !? I do not. What is the matter with them? They are idle. frivolous, vain,
 selfish. Their training is wrong. How to remedy that? The answer is sim | pie: Get a girl and train her yourself
 Hemphill; get one and train her your self. How to get one? The answer.
 to one with money Is even simpler: Buy one."
 He smiled as he licked the ash from his cigar and gazed into the coals. The idea was novel; there were good things about it to purchase a female child make her all that ahp ShnnlH he
 then to wed her and rear race of Hemphills for the Hemphill millions; it was not difficult and its merits were undenlable. Ho could get any sort of blood he wished to mix with his own and there would be no complica- tions of drunken brothers, needy fa- thers and SO forth.
 A week later, wrapped in a heavy shawl. he was sitting with stretched out legs in 9 chair on the deck of a trans Atlantic steamer. A week later he WAS in Greece. a hundred and fifty miles from Athens. He had made ur his mind as to the kind of blood he wanted. He wanted one of the older strains-a strain that has flowed in red. straight downward and untainted, for two thousand years. From a noun tain woman. the sister of a dead mother. he bought a girl child of three years. and returned immediately to Ame rica.
 This was his thought as he sat again in front of the study fire:
 Tn fifteen years I shall be 60, but sound and hale. Zoe-Zoe will be IS - just ripening into womanhood. I shall have her taught that which she should know. Especially shall 1t be taught her that she owes all things to me and that in due time she is to be my wife, and the possible mother of my chil- dren. With her there shall never be any nonsense. She must know who and what she is and what she is re- quired to do. She shall know that I bought her and for what purpose. Every tie of authority and gratitude shall bind her to me-"