San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1924-03-23

This was her situation. She was
thirty-five years old. She bad lost
her only child when he was very small.
And now she was just widowed. Her
income was a Thousand dollars a
day.
Her income was really more than
that. 1t was over four hundred thou
sand a year. But because most " 1t
came from one source people overlook.
ed various lesser sources rents ana
interests and mortgages and so on, ana
remembered only the sensational tact
that was really less than the truth!
"a thousand dollars day."
What would you do if you had
II? All. what mightnt one do! Live
for a week on one hundred dollars
or for two weeks on one hundred dol
lars, and then have thirteen thousand
nine hundred to play with! Pay up
little Miss Modiste's mortgase with
six hundred, and send poor NAMES
Rob back to medical school with an
other fifteen, and then off to Europe,
with a new trunk and a new hat and
dear old Cousin Sally. who has been
hnngcriug for Rome and London foT
every one of her sixty-two years.
This woman ] am talking about
had been a poor girl, and .nuue
brilliant watch. Remember that. YOU
girls who look on a little wistfully,
when some girl in your neighborhood
marries a man with "seads" or
goodies or buckets Of money. She
made a brilliant match, stepped
straight from a plain little restricted
home into wealth, honors, travels,
servants and gowns.
And thirteen years later she was
thirty-five, childless, a widow, with
q thousand dollars q day.
She had really loved her rich hus-
band, and she grleved for him, and
for the baby. She went, as many an
other desperate and grieving woman
goes for comfort, to Spiritualists, and
finally they got 8 message through
from her Henry. 1t was a test"
message, containing pet name or
some other Identification by which
she knew it was Henry. and nobody
else. And when she sobbed out now
bitterly she missed him, and how she
felt as il she herself had died with
him, Henry's shade said something
like this:
@Go on building. Mary! While
You are building, while You are
part Of the life-forces You can never
die -
Mary lived forty years longer. She
died only a short time ago. And
from that hour on she was never, as
she herself phrased it, out of the
sound of the carpenters hammers.
Poor foolish woman, she took this
allusion to building quite literally.
She must never stop building or she
would die. For forty years she built
and built and built.
She lost friends She went no
where. She became indeed one of
those harmlessly cracked" women
sbout whom a neighborhood loves to
loast.
That's old lady Smiths said
children, passing her deep garden,
~looky, She's putin on towers
now. She says she'll die if she stops
building.-
Her handsome country home, at
the time OF ner 1uSDdnu uealn, pos
sessed about sixteen rooms. She had
added more than one hundiec shu
fifty before she died, beside countless
passages, balconies, porches, closets
of all sorts, arcades, and some fifty
outhouses.
Gradually all the normal things OF
life fell away from her. She had no
guests. She became suspicious of her
servants. She communed with the
dead. She was afraid to, leave her
house, with its constant din of ham,
mers, for fear that death would find
her out. She finally became afraid to
finish anything. The carpenters were
never to come to her and say mat
any job was "done." She was afraid
of the word.
This sounds like a delightfully."- NOR.
al fairy-tale? But it is absolutely
true. I have walked through score.
of these rooms. 1t take four hour
to 20 through the house alone. Somt
Of them are magnificent; finished II
curly maple, mahogany or cherry, witt
great windows Of heavy plate, set will
opals and amythyst and topaz. TIL,
house cost about two millions. The!