Beverly banner. [volume] (Beverly, N.J.) 1877-1964, 1925-05-22

| life unprepared, might well have added
that he left it without provision.
Brena went to live with Mrs, Wilkie.
She remembered that lady as an in
| tensely practical woman who was al
ways in hurry. On haste, she had
| grown almost unpleasantly stout, and
one of the disagreeable memories of
Brena's tragic storehouse is the pic
ture of this woman's absurdly small
mouth, which would not stay fixed in
| one spot between her fat cheeks and
her fat chin, but moved about, appear
ing to be located first here and then
there, like newly punched orifce. 1t
| never moved so unpleasantly as when
she was talking of her ancestry, her
relatives who had great wealth and
her husbands injustice and brutality
in making her give up society. Her
husband had given up her society; he
had gone to parts unknown. She
brooded upon her fancy that she could
have been kind of dowager grandess
If she had been born under a luckier
star or had rejected Sam Wilkie.
She would not have been of any
particular Importance in the life of
Brena Selcoss had it not been for two
facts. One of them was that, lacking
other distinction, she could have that
of giving refuge at so much and so
much for room and board per week to
the most alluring young creature that,
for the moment, was known to the
male eyes of Dallas as an unsolyed
riddle. The other fact was that she
was the half-sister of the mother of
Jim Hennepin of Virginia.
Jim Hennepln, who liked to attach
to his name the words "of Virginia"
was the last of a line which had been
brought to American soil by refugee
Huguenot connected distantly with the
great explorer of the headwaters of the
Mississippi. There are those who re-
member him in his escapades in Dan
vile, and felt relief when his father,
who had himself dissipated the small
remainder of the Hennepin wealth
and tobacco lands in futile specula-
lions through a Washington broker,
said to Jim, you can go down to your
you up and have job all ready for
you with cotton buying and commits
sion house in Dallas. There is moth
ing left in my own pockets. The only
genius you have Is for getting into
trouble; your only talent is for figures.
AS time goes on the accountant is play
ing an evergrowing part in American
business, just as the drunkard is play
ing lesser part. Do you get my mean
ing, SOM"
This accounted for the presence of
Jim Hennepin in Texas. He had been
there two years. Compton Parmalee
& Co. had found nothing to criticize in
his bookkeeping. In fact, 1t had quail
ties of genius which sometimes make
bookkeeping not only cold record, but
vitalized inspiration of business.
Hennepin was useful addition to
Compton Parmalee's small staff. He
drank at the club, but with a modera-
ton considering his resistance to the
effect of alcohol. He was a popular
young man in Dallas, and the fact that
so many men in that Texas city have
now forgotten that they ever heard of
this youth is only commentary upon
the truth that the impressions most of
us make are not even fine scratches
when times roller has passed once or
twice over mems memory and today
has become so much more important
than yesterday and that which is in
sight covers that which is gone like
new strata in geological period.
1t would be untrue to deny that Jim
Hennepin was an attractive figure. If
he had craft and viciousness, as some
have said he had, 1t was belied by
the Hennepin smile-an inviting smile,
invoking the cheer of the moment like
smile of boy. Furthermore, he was
tall and graceful, like an oarsman in
an English college eight. He was more
like the bad son of an earl than a
bookkeeper and persons often in
quired who he was, especially before
they had heard him speak in his care
free modern American slang figures,
and were surprised to find that he was
older than he looked, had fought his
education for several wasted years at
the University of Virginia and was
earning forty dollars a week and
spending fifty-nine when he was over
| thirty.
GRO BE CONTINUED,