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MOTION PICTURE
'1 WANT THE FIJI ISLANDS, THE SOUTH SEAS, AND THE GRINNIN’, CHILD-HEARTED SOUTH *SEA ISLANDERS FOR
MY FRIENDS”
everywhere. And I dont mind saying that I dont want a — wife. Dont like
girls, anyway — silly things, and I'd have to divvy up my money. Money — all to myself — that’s mine.”
Three brothers — on the brink of the Great Divide. Three fresh-faced, sturdy lads with adventuring eyes and wistful, eager lips.
Forty years later, an old man, with fragile, silver-sprayed head, straightened up from his flowers and looked down the length of his greenhouse, for which, be it said, he was worldrenowned. At the end of the fronded, fragrant walk stood a slender girl and, bending over her, a dark, eager youth. The old man rubbed bis coat-sleeve across his misted eyes, and his mouth smiled. “'Rarest, loveliest flower of them all,” he muttered — ‘“grown from the soil of my heart, watered bv the life-blood of my love — you are living over again, for my eyes to see, the sweetness of the blossom-time.”
The man, to whom love and the
flowers had taught the divine lost chord of Life’s symphony, moved cautiously down the aisle. The man was leaning nearer the slender girl. “'Elsie,” he was saying, huskily, ‘‘I’m not near good enough for you, my sweetheart ; you’re like your father’s loveliest flowers ; but I’ll work for you — honest I will — all my life — and be so proud and so glad to do it. Will you take that, dear one — my life, and my work, and my love?” His eyes looked anxious and humble, and the girl’s laughing mood suddenly stilled. She raised her soft, young mouth for its first woman’s kiss — then her father came up behind her. She jumped, startled, but the old man smiled at them and kist the girl very tenderly.
“‘I’m glad, my girl,” he said. “I’m glad you are going to live the life your father has proved the only life worth while — a life where the simple things are the real things — where love is a grave and a beautiful reality, books are friends, and flowers are about you everywhere. In such a life, my chil
dren, there is the work that is its own fruition; leisure that is perfumed by the incense of the hearthstone, and love that is bound together by the ligaments of the earth. Ward, you have been a faithful co-worker with me, here among the flowers ; you have proven yourself clean, and honorable, and strong — the three notches by which my daughter's mate must measure.
And little Elsie ” he looked at the
wistful, glorified face, tenderly. “Long ago,” he reminisced, “my brothers and I stood together and mapped out what we were to be — what we wanted to do. Dick wanted to be a buccaneer and a South Sea Islander. Well, he had his heart's desire, even to the wife. Dear, bluff, hearty old Dick — the sea has brought him the freight of his soul. Harry wanted monc\', the city, and the city ways, and Harry is a soured, cramped, disappointed man today. He has thrown away his birthright — the birthright of every son of Adam — for a mess of pottage. And I said I wanted the flowers — and a wife — and
(Thirty-eight )