Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-06-09

those qualities that go to solidify and enrich the
human scene. Helen and Lazarus Bradstoop
had buded well and tenanted their home with
family that they reared in harmony and uni
son. Four girls and six boys were the issue of
it. All, with the exception of two sacrificed to
war, grown and out of the nest.
Even the nest that had borne them had
passed. With the marriage of their last child
Allen, to a French viscount, the old couple
responding to pressure had agreed to give up
the great brownstone family home and move
into the compact quarters of apartment
hotel.
It worked, too. They frankly enjoyed the
new freedom from responsibility. The relief
from the pressure of large household machina-
tions. For the first time in almost half cen
fury, Helen Lazarus found herself with time on
her hands. For the first time in that period
Lazarus, free of business and family burdens,
felt himself at liberty to sun himself of a morn
ing in the large park opposite the hotel, or to
drive with his wife through the wide, clean
boulevards Of the city, which he had seen de-
velop from struggling town into a Middle
West metropolis
IT was touching to behold the gratitude Of
these two old ones for their new leisure. They
used it to advantage, visiting their several mar
ried sons and daughters driving with their
grandchildren, re-establishing old social ties
that had become neglected in the busy years
of rearing fortune and family
took their first trip abroad, in the company of
one of their older sons and his wife.
1t was four-month tour and as Helen proud
ly related when they returned, their son and
daughter-in-law had literally carried them
about, so solicitous were they for the well-beng
and comfort Of the parents.
That was the attitude of the entire large
family Of Bradstoops. Helen and Lazarus had
reached time of life when they were entitled
to the good things. The Bradstoop children, by
tacit agreement, saw to 1t, each and severally
that their parents should come into rich
old age.
To grow old like the Bradstoops, surrounded
by love, giving it, receiving 1t, secure in one
another, and in the ministrations of the huge
and devoted family, was the kind Of thing the
beholder unconsciously coveted for his own and
for himself.
Every year when the family met at Christ
mas, around a table that seated 40 even a
stranger looking in might have felt his heart
strain as he saw; strain with a sense of the
beauty OF this spectacle of family well-being.
For that is what it was, scene diffused with
the warmth OF many hearts beating high around
the nucleus OF pair of parents who had build
ed well.
And now, we come to what must reluctantly
be termed the fly in the ointment. If there
was one flaw in the perfect family sequence, it
centered around the charming and personable
figure Of Aileen BradStoop, who had married
the viscount and moved to Paris.
THE Bradstoops, with unanimity. had OPP
posed that marriage of the baby of the
family to Leland LIE Conte young aviator who
had gravitated to st. Louis, as that city was by
way OF becoming an aviation center of the
world.
Aileen and LIE Conte met at a country club.
became engaged that same evening and 10 days
later were married with an ado of social furry
TO say nothing OF the consistent, if repressed,
opposition of the Bradstoop family.
lie Conte was bonafide to connection, all
right. The third son Of an ancient If decadent
Alsatian family, mpecunious reckless, high
strung, but all in all, in the opinion Of the
Bradstoops and their friends. just the man for
the correspondingly high-strung Aileen not to
marry.
A word about Aileen. Born six years after
the ninth child, she had been from the start.
special kind Of a youngster. Erratic strangely
lovely in a blonde fashion that was distinctly
departure from the Bradstoop olive tints and
with blue eyes that glittered like ice in the sun
Countless were the secret conferences held by
her parents over this elusive sprite, their child
Her mother feared her a bit and where a repri-
mand would suffice for one Of the other chill
dren. with Aileen it was always a matter OF
knowing just how to handle her
The old gentleman Bradstoop a disciplinarian
after a fashion, although kind one to the
letter. SHE'D off a bit, too, where Aileen was
concerned. In the phraseology of the st. Louis
of this period people said that Aileen had her
family bluffed." They deferred to her. She
was swan in a barnyard. special breed
An exotic in a just ordinary garden.
For instance, in a community where smoking
was still a vice for woman, Aileen at 18 fiaunt-
ed the weed, defying parental remonstrance and
threatening to smoke in the public parks If the
home were forbidden her.
Aileen won.
At l9 she openly went to the room of one
of the towns well known bachelors, entered I'M
md inf fl,o f7obt,