Viewing page 95 of 113

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

In mid-July, we went to a Griswold Club dinner—dance at Conneaut Lake. We took with us, Perk and two of his girl-friends, the younger of whom was for Jerry Hoddy, who was to meet us there. Her name was Mary Warner, an Erie girl and a senior at Ohio Wesleyan. She was a very quiet type, slender, dark hair, youthful appearing, with an oval face, straight, perfect nose, and unusually lovely dark—brown eyes set wide apart—-and beautiful teeth that made her smile a joy to see, the most ingenuous smile I'd seen in a long, long time. To me her whole appearance was one of quiet, intelligent, youthful fineness that was very gripping. She acted a bit diffident but, at the same time, gave the impression that a lot was going on in the mind behind that high, lovely forehead and those dark, thoughtful eyes. It was hard for me to keep my eyes off her when we were together and I wondered if there was anything mutual in the interest because several times I discovered her looking at me thoughtfully. We danced together once and talked little or nothing but trivialities. But she left a happy memory of a "lovely, clean, smiling, innocent, youthful, thoughtful face" and I told myself that, while I might be entirely wrong, she seemed unusual to me. I told myself also, that while I'd probably not see her again, I hoped that I would. I don't recall now ever meeting her again under such circumstances although I'd see her on the street occasionally. But apparently I was correct in judging her unusual because to my utter amazement, she proved later on to be Ruth Stevens' dear friend. She never married. She lived on in Erie and may still live here although there is a Mary A, Warner in the phone book who lives in Edinboro and I suspect that is she. But here was another of life's tragedies and one I found it hard to believe--but that was the story. Maybe it was wrong.

Not long after this experience, I took another of my walks from the office down along the lake, follwing the rocky shore west of the clubhouse. The Dover ferry churned out across the lake and disappeared finally in a summer haze. Fishermen were casting their nets nearby. Wavelets washed along the steep banks that were once below the water. It was a beautiful scene, bringing home to one the urgent necessity for living fine and appreciatively in all things. I felt that I should give at least fifteen minutes a day to the appreciation of beauty like that—-to thinking of fine, deep, worthwhile things-—to intimacy with God and thoughts of what is really wanted and worthwhile. It would be like my "Candlelight" every day. But the pressures of my life precluded my ever attaining this--once in a while I would but not often.

Soon after that, some association took me back to a day ten years before when Louie Neill and I took a walk out through the autumn country back of her p1ace, which gave me an indescribable yearning--a1most desperate at the time--to be back in my college days again. It wasn't the thought of Louie but of youth and the unspent youthful years—-the thought of those