Los Angeles herald., 1909-08-21
MISSOURI JUDGE
WEDS WOMAN OF.
YOUTHFUL FANCY
SECRET MARRIAGE FOLLOWS
MEETING IN BOOK STORE
ROMANCE BEGUN TWENTY YEARS
AGO cULMlNATEs HAPPILY
Los Angeles Scene of Recent Chapter
in Love Story Covering Four
States-To Return to JEFF
ferson City

1t became known yesterday that
Judge Gaven D. Burgess, chief justice
of the supreme court of Missouri, was
married secretly in Los Angeles July
II to Miss May Berger, whom he met in
a book store after a lapse of nearly
twenty years, having known her during
her girlhood in Fleming county, Ky.
The judge entered the store to purchase
a book and recognized the woman who
had sought seclusion among the dusty
tones on the shelves during the years
which followed the blighting of her
earlier romance. Miss Berger was the
proprietor of book and souvenir shop
in the H. w. Hellman building The
couple are now living at Mrs. Burgess
residence, SO South Grand avenue.
They will leave for Jefferson City, Mo,
September 10, where Judge Burgess will
resume his duties on the bench.
Into the story of the meeting after
the passing of the years in which one
had become rich and famous in his
profession and the other, woman like,
had lived the past over again among
her books, there is woven a romantic
idyl of the sudden fulfillment of hope
long deferred of Journeys ended in
lovers meeting"
Children in Kentucky
Little May Berger wore her hair
down her back and carried home per-
simmons in her gingham apron when
GaVen Burgess first knew her, back in
the bluegrass state. The son of Henry
D. Burgess, a member of a distin-
guished Kentucky family, with the ad-
vantage of a thorough education and
social distinction, the young barrister
rose rapidly in his profession and be-
came one of the leading members of
the Fleming county bar. Later he re-
moved to Missouri, and fortune still
favored him, honors and riches came
easily, and he became O judge of the
eleventh judicial district of Missouri.
The little girl with the braids and the
gingham apron had become Kentucky
belle, surrounded by suitors, during the
years in which she held court in the
village where she grew to womanhood.
The distinguished Judge Burgess re-
turned to visit his childhood home, and
the romance was renewed. Then there
appears a chapter in the story still un-
revealed. The girl, now a woman, came
west. The judge returned to his law
books and the years sped by. But, as
in the story of Immensee, there was
little miniature portrait in a frame
above the book case.
Meet in Book Store
After many years of close application
to his work, in which he had been
twice elected to the circuit judiciary
and finally to the leadership of the
highest tribunal of the state, Judge
Burgess came to California, during
the week of the Elks' grand lodge re-
union. Sedate and dignified, he did not
mingle readily with the struggling
crowds which thronged the streets and
passed the days in leisurely gazing into
the shop windows. One day, as gar
ish procession went by, he was jostled
against the window of a book store
and, leaning on his stick, stopped to
look at the books. He recognized a
rare old volume which he had long
wished to possess and went in to pur-
chase 1t.
The years were quickly bridged in
the instant in which he gazed into the
face of the woman who looked at him
across the tiers of books on the table,
and he recognized the little Kentucky
girl whom he had left back in the
Fleming county village.
The book will be taken to Jefferson
City and given place at the head Of
all the law books