However, I was glad to sell my interests, clearing about $22,000 in cash upon the entire deal. It was at this time, while employing quite a large office force, that Mr. J. L. Connor asked me to give his sister Gertrude some work to do. Instead of doing so at once I told him I would aid him in furnishing her with the means to take a short course in a business college, and if later she proved proficient, I would give her employment. Shortly after her commencing to attend this business college, she received an offer of marriage from a young clerk in Chicago. She spoke to us of it, and asked us to learn, if we could, of the antecedents of the young man and of his prospects. Our investigation resulted in learning that he had a wife living in Chicago. Gertrude was inclined to disbelieve this statement, and not expressing herself as being willing to break the engagement, Mr. Connor thought best to send her to her home in Iowa. A statement from the physician who attended her at the time of her death, long after this, speaks for itself, effectually disproving one of the most persistent and disagreeable charges that have been brought against me. I have had many young ladies in my employ, most of whom are still living in and about Chicago, whose parents and friends know only too well that far from being their seducer I have done much to materially help them in their narrow lives, owing to the enormous competitions in Chicago for positions. At about this time I sent Pitezel South upon an extended lumber purchasing trip, and upon his return to Chicago he encountered some severe domestic troubles, the full details of which he did not tell me until long afterwards. But at the time they resulted in a neighborhood quarrel and some arrests, and thereafter he grew more morose, and drank more freely than he had done heretofore, but managed to do so during my absence or after working hours, as he knew me to be wholly intolerant of drunkenness in my employees. It was about January 1, 1893, when I first met Minnie R. Williams at the intelligence office of Mr. William Campbell on Dearborn street, Chicago, whom she had engaged to provide her with a position as stenographer. [Illustration: EMELINE CIGRAND.] I found her to be a bright, intelligent woman, an interesting conversationalist and one who I could see had seen much of the world. When she had been working in my office for a few weeks, knowing that she had a history, I asked her one stormy winter afternoon to tell it to me. After considerable hesitation she did so, in nearly the following words:—