The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1915-04-04


A NEW YORK business man with
~ the psychological mechanism Of
n sultan'
The successful and unimagi-
native stockbroker who sits across the
luncheon table from you is oriental Of
personality. You think of him vaguely
as peculiar" when flashes of the eastern
instinct dart across the prosaic drab Of
his type. Most American is he Of appear
ence, outlook, life; yet that disQuiet-
ing. mystic something turks Just back of
1t all His subconsciousness touches
yours like a breath from Nippon; you
always think Of him as Of the east.
Or the little woman-sensitive, super.
refined, intellectualEwhom you met at
your friends home last night; why in
her presence were you obsessed with the
thought Of Du Barry? In no particular
was she like the notorious French wom-
an. Yet as she talked and laughed you
remembered stories that you hadn't
thought of since your student days of
the life and character Of the woman who
enslaved Louis XIV.
Would that little woman be q Du
Barry otherwise environedY
Or the Insignificant seeming man, IN
educated and reared in poverty, who
walks along the road of life straight to
power and riches. Is he the f1ller-in
who draws the front page when the
chronicle of the universe goes to press
because he followed the trend Of his per-
sonality?
Virginius Julian Mayo, New York mil
lionaire clubman and manufacturer, is
not an ordinary libertine. Whatever is
to be said of his liaisons; whether he was
dragged into them by the stronger fac
tor in dual personality, and they were
therefore not liaisons at all to him, but
legitimate unions; or whether he is the
advocate of sometime-to-be free love
ahead Of his day, no one is going to
know. He only says he has no regard
for the conventions. The fact remains
that he has attempted to support and
care for each Of the six women who have
stood in the place of wife to him and
the children of four of them that are also
his children.
A seventh woman lies In her grave,
a bullet in her heart, her lips sealed
on what hope, happiness or sorrow she
knew. The little life that was going to
be, died with her. And in the offices OF
the Mayo Radiator Company, at New
Haven, Conn, and at her fathers poor
church she attended, Lillian May Cook
Is only q memory.
Mutely her tragedy told the last chap
ter In the life Of Mayo: and curiously,
as in mystery novels, the last chapter
suddenly became the first chapter, and
his tale unfolded step by step, at each
step q woman.
Mrs. Florence Weeks Mayo, weary and
careworn, her face traced with lines OF
patient watching for a day that has never
come, let her mind go beyond the little
parlor of her home in Scranton, Pa, over
the years. Her eyes, violet blue, grew
misty and she passed tired looking
hand back and forth across her gray hair.
Il was seventeen when he came to
Scranton first" she said. NOW I'm for
ty-two. He was a southerner, handsome
and fascinating. He was an electrician
and he'd made money selling inventions
to Edison.
II loved him almost from the begin
ming. He was always SO kind to me; his
personality was magnetic couldn't re-
sist 1t and couldn't understand
HE told me that he'd lost his wife
In the south and that his little six-year-
old daughter was living with relatives
Aside from that knew nothing about
him when / went away to be married.
We went to Binghamtop and came home
again very, very happy. / was happy
. long time.
"And then / began to understand how
little he cared about the marriage VOW
1t meant nothing to him at all. He was
like a butterfly, fitting from flower to
flower, enjoying the sun of many women's
smiles. He WIS stern-almost brutal
when l protested. Ny babies were little
then and was helpless. Charlotte is
xx.& h. L. xvu,<,
younger and Marion is nineteen.
when Marion was four he left US. He
dung me aside like a toy of which he
was tired. leaving US to get on the best
way we could.
81 found Office work and managed %