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14

Another home on the fringes of civilization in Sedgwick Farms was that of the Barnes family, another lawyer, I think. They had Mary, about my age, and very plump with a pretty face, and John, a year or so younger. Now that I think of it some more, I believe that Mr. Barnes was with the Solvay Process Co. Also there were one or two more still younger children. I think Mary was in my graduating class in grammer school. The Barnes also owned a cottage at Selkirk across the road from Fitches and spent the whole summer there.

The Kingsburys lived in a flat on DeWitt Street across from the Sedgwick Farms Club property, which was two blocks from us. Mr. and Mrs. Kingsbury made a handsome couple and their daughter, Virginia, inherited their good looks. Mr. Kingsbury was a relatively young man, maybe in his early thirties, and worked for one of the big plow companies in Syracuse -- John Deere or Syracuse Chilled Plow probably -- and I think he was in an engineering or maybe manufacturing capacity. Virginia was a blond with a very pretty face and for some reason, I'll never forget her in a white dress covered with polka dots maybe two inches in diameter but not too close together. She was a doll! I used to go down to the Kingsburys' flat and play with Ginny in the early days, simply carried away. Ginny was in my grammer School graduating class too. As I've recounted, the Kingsburys moved into a flat on Highland Avenue and other neighborhood boys began to be conscious of Ginny (also known as Chub) and then Mother and I moved off Highland and gradually my infatuation for Ginny faded away and she went out of my life. I'll never forget that I was sitting in our car outside Women's and Children's Hospital one day waiting for my father to come out, and learned I was there at just about the time Ginny's brother, John, was born within. The last I heard of Ginny was many years ago; I believe she married a wealthy New Yorker named Gillespie and finally divorced him.

Moving up DeWitt toward our corner from Kingsburys, we came to an old house, not too neat, sitting way back from the street and with a depressed front yard which required a wooden footbridge to go from the front sidewalk to the porch. The house seemed always to need paint and lay in the shade of several big tress out front. In this house lived Mr. and Mrs. Bennett and their son, Dana, who was my age and a terror if there ever was one; but, strangely, Dana and I got along fine. Mr. Bennett worked for Pierce, Butler & Pierce in a financial capacity but managed to come out of the bankruptcy and reorganization with flying colors, becoming, as I recall, treasurer with headquarters in New York City whence the Bennetts presently moved maybe around 1913-1914. Mr. Bennett was a Protestant and member of May Memorial Church (Unitarian) where we went, while Mrs. Bennett was Catholic and, of course, Dana was brought up in the Catholic church although I question how good a Catholic