Part 44 (2/2)

It counts too, that Tillie, who had once found work through the Bureau, but was now keeping house for her father, should turn to the Bureau for aid Her father had been sick and couldn't afford to buy her anything neear ”My dress is so cluo out in the street” She was confident that the Job Lady would help her--and her confidence was not misplaced It counts that the Jameses and Henrys and Johns and Marys and Sadies co over with joy, to tell the Job Lady of a ”raise” or of a bit of approbation frorateful, pathetic letters that pour in count unspeakably!

To hundreds of boys and girls and parents the Job Lady has proved a friend There has been no nonsense about the matter She has not sentimentalized over her work; she has not made it smack of charity

Indeed, there is no charity about it The boys and girls and parents who coe boys and girls and parents, as little paupers as ht of in a deh to, buy assistance, or poor enough to accept it as al the probleh the Bureau, to give to these averagetheir lives to the conditions under which they live and work, and to do it with a sy--a humanness that warms the soul

_(Kansas City Star)_

Two illustrations with the captions: 1 ”Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher,” an Illustration in the ”Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (Harpers), which met the Author's Approval

2 Mrs Laura Frazer, the Original ”Becky Thatcher,” Pouring Tea at Mark Twain's Boyhood Home in Hannibal, Mo, on the Anniversary of the Author's Birth

MARK TWAIN'S FIRST SWEETHEART, BECKY THATCHER, TELLS OF THEIR CHILDHOOD COURTshi+P

To Mrs Laura Frazer of Hannibal, Mo, Mark Twain's immortal ”Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is a rosary, and the book's plot is the cord of fiction on which beads of truth are strung In the sunset of her life she tells the the roseate chaplet is a bead gray in coloring, time has softened the hues of all so they blend exquisitely This bead recalls a happy afternoon on the broad Mississippi with the boys and girls of seventy years ago; the next brings up a picture of a schoolroom where a score of little heads bob over their books and slates, and a third visualizes a wonderful picnic excursion to the woods with a feast of fried chicken and pie and cake

For Mrs Frazer is the original of Becky Thatcher, the childhood sweetheart of Toinal of Tom Sawyer, of course, was Mark Twain himself

”Yes, I was the Becky Thatcher of Mr Clemens's book,” Mrs Frazer said the other day, as she sat in the big second floor front parlor of the old time mansion in Hannibal, which is now the Home for the Friendless

Mrs Frazer is the matron of the home

”Of course I suspected it when I first read the 'Adventures of Tom Sawyer,'” she went on ”There were soto Sam Clemens and myself that I felt he had drawn a picture of his hter But I never confided my belief to anyone I felt that it would be a presumption to take the honor to myself

”There were other woht here in Hannibal--and they atte that they were the prototypes of the character

When Albert Bigelow Paine, Mr Cleathered the material for his life of the author, he found no fewer than twenty-five women, in Missouri and elsewhere, each of whom declared she was Becky Thatcher, but he settled the controversy for all tiraphy was published In it you will find that Becky Thatcher was Laura Hawkins, which was irl sweethearts, Sah

She is elderly, of course, since it was seventy years ago that her friendshi+p with Mark Twain began, and her hair is gray But her heart is young, and she finds in her work of e the secret of defying age On this particular afternoon she wore black and white striped silk, the effect of which was a soft gray to hted with smiles of reminiscence

”Children are wholly unartificial, you know,” she explained ”They do not learn to conceal their feelings until they begin to grow up The courtshi+p of childhood, therefore, is a matter of preference and of comradeshi+p I liked Sam better than the other boys, and he liked irls, and that was all there was to it”

If you had seen this lady of Old Missouri as she told of her childhood romance you would have recalled instinctively Mark Twain's description:

A lovely little blue eyed creature with yellow hair plaited into two long tails, white summer frock and eel with furtive eye until he saw that she had discovered hian to ”show off” in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win her admiration

And you would have found it easy to conceive that this refined, gentle countenance once was apple cheeked and rosy, that the serene gray eyes once sparkled as blue as the Father of Waters on a sunny day and that the frosted hair was as golden as the sunshi+ne

”I must have been 6 or 7 years old e moved to Hannibal,” Mrs

Frazer said ”My father had owned a big ro slaves further inland, but he found the task of ht a ho to move to it when he died My rown brothers--I was one of ten children, by the way--and came to Hannibal Our house stood at the corner of Hill and Main streets, and just a few doors west, on Hill Street, lived the Clemens family

”I think I must have liked Sam Clemens the very first time I saw him He was different from the other boys I didn't know then, of course, what it was that e of the world and its people grew, I realized that it was his natural refine at all for his books and he was guilty of all sorts of mischievous pranks, just as Tom Sawyer is in the book, but I never heard a coarse word from him in all our childhood acquaintance

”Hannibal was a little tohich hugged the steah the old part of the city now you will find it much as it hen I was a child, for the quaint old weatherbeaten buildings still stand, proving how thoroughly the pioneers did their work We went to school, we had picnics, we explored the big cave--they call it the Mark Twain Cave now, you know”