Emmett Lawler #267144

Lord, give to men who are old and rougher,<br>The things that little children suffer,<br>And let keep bright and undenled,<br>The young years of a little child.<br><br>- Masefield.<br><br>The First Episode<br><br>The child had arrived a month too soon. The doctor had arrived an hour too late. Emmett Lawler was six years old when this episode occurred. There was a commotion in a log cabin home in Ohio. During the first hour of the first of May his mother had closed her eyes upon a world from which the fairies of her girlhood had long since vanished. It had been her strength that kept the family ship from sinking in the sea of life.<br><br>Students of genealogy should pause here just a moment. Here was a dead eagle, born for the mountains, whose clipped wings had forced her to walk the mud roads of Ohio. From somewhere out of the long ago she had inherited a beautiful emotional nature. She had but scant education, and though her mind was powerful, it was ever and always a dreaming mind. In the midst of heart breaking realities she lived in a dream world of which John Keats was king.