Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-04-11
IsTHMIAN CANAL CHIEF.
Stories About T. P. Shonts,
 Panama Commissioner.
INCIDENTS OF HIS EARLY YEARS

Tell In Homely Words of His
 Childhood Accomplishments,W Which
 Are still tho Theme Nearest Their
 Hearts, and Treasure Toys the Man
 Long ForGot-Why They Are Sad at
 Their Boys Success.
 Among the oak and beech groves, where the hazel bushes line the wind- ing roadside and where in summer the COWS stand in the meadows, fQ the sub- urb of Beverly Hills stands row of four cottages. Each of the four cot tages is occupied by branch of the Shonts family, says the Chicago Trib- une. In the gray one and a half story house where the June roses climb up on the porch and try to look in at the window venerable couple, Mir. and Mrs. Henry D. Shonts, live. Their son, Theodore Perry Shonts of Chicago, is the newly appointed chairman of the Panama canal commission.
 Instead of being the proudest mother in Illinois at the honor that has been conferred upon her son Mrs. Shonts at the announcement "wept bitter tears.' 'They were as big as that 'ar table," explained her husband, with chuckle. "No; we don't think much of the boys new job. Too many skeeters and yellow fever germs in Panama"
 The good couple, both of whom have completed more than fourscore years, still regard Theds as the boy who in his Sunday school days remembered 200 verses of Scripture in a week" Proud of that record, no. future con quests of the new commissioner quite can equal that prodigious feat. Theds himself stands six feet ill his stockings and, from appearances at least, should be both. yellow fever and mosquito proof.
 Nevertheless the old folks are un- reconciled. They do not share the en. thusiasm that prompted Miss Eva Shonts of the Young Peoples Christian Temperance union to send a telegram to her big brother congratulating him upon the patriotic mission that he is about to undertake.
 ''Theds was good boy when he was young," said Mrs. Shonts, with depre- catory shake of her head. "He never went out nights then or went chasing away to foreign parts. l don't know where he got those ideas in his head. We didn't teach them to him. Theds was fine boy once. '[- 'i. 4@ ?
 "He was brought up United Pres. byterlan, and when he was six years old we took him with us from Pennsyl- vania, where we were raised, across the mountains into the wilderness of Iowa. There wasn't any Presbyterian Sunday school in Crawford county, so we s,at him to the Methodist school. Every morning he would learn thirty verses from the Bible, and when Sun. day came, with the 200 verses in his mind, he would recite them in his class at Sunday school. They used to give him cards and banners for his good be- havior But I'm afraid he doesn't get many cards and banners now.
 "Only once he went to sleep in church. It was at the end of a long sermon. We went home without him, and we couldn't imagine where he was. We knew he never went out nights. Finally we found him curled up on the cushions of the family pew and sound asleep in the dark church"
 The religious strain in the Shonts family dates back to the sixteenth cen- tury. The great-great-great-and-more- great.grandparents of the Panama commissioner were pagans. They had captured pretty golden haired maiden in the wars. This little maid, they dis covered, always was reading. They found the book one day under a stone, where she had hidden it. It was the gospel of St. John. The great-great. great-and-more-gr great-grandparents read this book and became converted. They were locked up in castle by the sea. The jailer also came under the religious influence and assisted them to drop down from window into a boat that tossed in the dark waves.
 TheodOre's earliest heroine was the golden haired maid who read the gos pei Of St. John out fin the meadows while she watched the sheep. AS he heard his father tell the story by the open fireside of the country home he often imagined her to have been q stolen princess, the daughter of a bat tie king. Later, when he was sixteer years old. according to his father, likt many other boys of the same age. ht fell in love with an "old maid"
 "why. she was ten years older thar he was," declared Mrs. Shonts. Hs had begun to teach school out in tht country where the pupils, both the boys and girls, were older and bigger thar he was. Theds got along fine. He al ways did with anything he undertook
 We sent him to college when h' was quite young. I'm afraid he didn' study as hard as he should have. H, could have got through in three year if he had tried. One of our greates pleasures was when he used to com, home and read his Hebrew testamen to us. He doesn't read that Hebrew testament much now.
 He was the only one in all his clas
 that didn't drink or smoke. He Wal too young for that We sent him 1;