Dear Miss: The writer of this letter has had a windfall and he wants one of your woman-folks to have a share in it. He has lived in an old folks’ home himself for ten years, hand running, and he has a feeling for them others. My cousin Obadiah Hawkins died up to Lakeland last week. He never would so much as lend me a penny whilst he was living, but now he’s dead, he’s left me ten thousand dollars in ready money and a house and a home. There’s a pump in the kitchen. He never was no hand for investments and the money was all in an old silver water pitcher. It’s all good and the matron here has counted it over. I always wanted a home of my own and never was able to afford one. I always wanted a wife of my own and never could get up gumption enough to ask any woman to share my bad luck. Now the luck has turned. I got the home. All I need is the wife. I be going to drive over this afternoon and see if you got anybody that’s willing. I put it that way ’cause I ain’t much account if I have come into a tidy little fortune. I wear a wig and have spells of lumbago. It’s the lumbago what brought me here. There ain’t a lazy bone in my body. As for the requirements of the lady. She must be under seventy years old; she mustn’t wear a wig or dye her hair. I want one respectable suit of hair between us. She mustn’t squint or take snuff, and if she is sot on keeping chickens—some women be—she must keep them in the coop. I’ll build the coop. And she must love flowers and garden sass. Expecting them to be on deck this afternoon at three o’clock, I am, Yours most respectfully, Samuel Jessup. A moment’s intense silence followed the matron’s public reading of this letter in the large hall which served as the community room of the Old Ladies’ Home. The matron, her young gray eyes twinkling and shining, looked from one old face to the other. Some were broadly grinning under their crowns of gray hair, some were hurt and scornful, some were only puzzled and amazed—these belonging to the old ladies who had held their shriveled, shaking hands as trumpets before their ears during the reading of the letter. And some faces were marred by a shrewd, keen, calculating look as if to exclaim: “I wonder if—!” The matron looked at them all, her smile slowly growing broader, then quickly she looked down at her desk and said with business-like briskness: “That is a very honest letter. I wish you could all give it your serious attention. There is no fraud in it, for I have telephoned to the Old Men’s Home, and Mr. Jessup is a noble, straightforward character. Now, are any of you willing to see him this afternoon? I suggest that all those who can not or who will not give Mr. Jessup a chance for their hands this afternoon, leave the hall.”