TRAVELING COMPANION: Widow preparing for extended tour of Europe wants to engage young lady as traveling companion and secretary. Must be young, beautiful, fascinating and accomplished. All expenses and suitable salary. Z 14, Tribune. The advertisement was what is known in newspaper parlance as a "blind" or keyed ad. It did not give any street address, letters of application being sent to the newspaper and there held for the advertiser. A young Chicago girl read the advertisement and answered it. In her letter of application she said that she had been called beautiful by her friends, that she spoke several languages, that she was convent bred and that she had previously traveled extensively. She also stated her age, which was 22. The girl inclosed her address in the letter and said that, if considered favorably, she would be pleased to call upon the "widow." The young Chicago girl was all that she declared herself to be. Her beauty was a matter beyond dispute. Her charm of manner and her accomplishments were on a plane with her innocence and purity. The day following the mailing of the letter a caller was announced at the young lady's home. The caller was an elderly woman. She was dressed in black. Her adornment was rich. It bespoke an apparent command of wealth. The woman's language and general demeanor was that of marked social standing. She gave her name as "Schwartz." To the young girl she made known the fact that she was the authoress of the advertisement which the young lady had answered in the papers. She said that her home was in southern California. She said that her husband had been a very wealthy resident of California and that most of her life had been spent in her own home. She said her husband had died a few months before, leaving her alone with no relatives and practically no friends in the world. "I have always been a home body," she said. "My life was wrapped up in my home and my husband. When he died there seemed nothing else on earth to live for. God did not see fit to bless us with children. The death of my husband left me prostrated. The first illness of my life came then. Doctors told me that unless I sought a change in travel that I might drag out many long years alone as an invalid. "I have all the money I know what to do with. When the physicians told me to leave the scene of my sorrows, and to leave at once, I packed hurriedly and departed from Los Angeles. I have had no time to think until I reached Chicago. "Now that I am here I have realized that I must have a companion for reasons that you can very easily understand. I do not want an old person about me. It was the thought of the mental diversion that caused me to advertise for a young and vivacious girl. At the same time I must have some one who knows how to travel, how to attend to the endless details that travel involves. That is why your letter came to me as a godsend."