The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1931-01-15
DADDY"
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By FANNIE HURST
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"a. 1880. Mcclure Newspaper Syndicate.


4 why the slim flower girl named
Dot Feverill had married him, he
was not entitled to them.
Dot herself, although too young to
realize much of her own psychology,
had never treated him with any more
than the affectionate solicitude of the
very young toward one who is con-
siderably older and benign.
When Dot Feverill was twenty-one,
as lovely as jonquil. and with
voice that promised to be an operate
one, she developed spot on her lung.
There was nothing of the convention
al "angel" about AL Koken. He was a
fat, middle-aged stock broker, who
had come to know Dot through a
friend of his, business manager of
one of the largest operatic companies
in America. Her case was pathetic,
her beauty appealing, and her plight
appalling.
1t was KOken's money that sent her
to Arizona for two years; it was the
pudgy little hand Of the fat old bach
elor that wrote out the generous
monthly checks.
Dots recovery was only partial. Her
condition responded to the high, clean
western air. Her health did improve
greatly and the old beauty flowed
back into her face. But at the end
Of two years, when she returned to
New York to resume her work, the
sad truth revealed itself that there
were only certain climates where Do:
could thrive. The old lung condition
began to reassert itself; she began to
wilt again.
Humbly, reverently, secretly anl
deeply in love was Al Koken.' 1t is
doubtful, had the return of Oct - a
state of health been permanent
one. that this deep-rootcd love Of Al
for Dot would ever have found voice
He was timid soul, kindly, naive to
q degree that was incredible.
For a man-of-the-world, at least Of
the-world to the extent that sue
cegsful broker or Wall Street is bound
to be, he was as uncompleX as a
child in certain OF the ways in which
you expect the average man to be
versed. AL Koken had attained his
bachelorhood (he was fifty-siX when
he met Dot) without more than
half dozen women having crossed his
path, and those half dozen casually.
There are more men like that in
the world than we realize, chiefly be-
cause their stories are too eventleSs
to project themselves.
The quality Of gratitude that Dot
Feverill gave AL Koken transcribed
even her own understanding. From
her teens, life had been precariouS
performance for her. Hers had been
the perilous and somewhat melodra
matte position of a really beautiful girl,
without parents, obliged at an early
age to get out on her own. The gift
of a voice asserting itself had not
made her position any easier. So many
things could have happened to Dot
which did not, chiefly because when
she was barely in her twenties a man
of the caliber of Al Koken had pro-
videntially crossed her path.
How it came about, after her return
to the east from Arizona, and the sub
sequent relapse into i'll health, that
Al Koken was finally to find the cour-
age to ask her to marry him was never
clear in his own mind.
She seemed so beyond his reach;
she seemed so out of his ken. From
the first day he had clamped eyes
upon her, he had realized that, and
had felt humbly grateful for his ca
pacity to serve her as friend.
In any event, the pathos of it gave
AL Koken the courage, and into the
safe retreat of this kind mans shell
tering arms there crept gratefully
the wounded and the frightened Dot.
The marriage that resulted was
one of those built on passionate ador-
alton on one side and grateful, sweet
humility on the other.
The happiest day in AL Koken's life
was when he closed his affairs in the
East, pocketed large nest-egg of the
money he had earned and saved
throughout the long years of his bach
elorhood, and turned his face, with
the frail, lovely one of his bride, to-
ward the more benign climate of south
ern California.
AS AL Koken used to say to him
self in the period that followed, those
precious first years of his marriage
contained more happiness than any
one man had a right to expect of
lifetime. The Al Kokens took up their
abode in what was literally castle
in the air; luxurious Spanish villa
that hung from a mountainside that
faced the placidity of the Pacific
ocean.
And what happened subsequently
was understandable to him, because
in the depth of his happiness he was
still capable of a strange wisdom;
the wisdom of realizing the inevita-
bility of what was to come. 1t was not
that the lovely Dot loved him less, or
that her gratefulness to him as her
Daddy" ever wavered. The sentiment
which was inscribed in her sweet,
scrawling hand on a photograph of
herself that hung in his room, ITO
my darling Daddy from grateful
Dot" was none the less sincere be-
cause one day, one inevitable day,