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Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl
By IRENE ELLIOTT BENSON
1912
Ethel would have never become a Camp Fire Girl excepting for hergreat-aunt Susan.
Susan Carpenter was her Grandmother Hollister's only sister, living inAkron, Ohio. Her family consisted of Mr. Thomas Harper and herself. Tom'sparents had been her friends, and when they were taken Aunt Susan legallyadopted him and his little brother Fred, but the younger one died beforegraduating, while Tom went through college and was now a rising younglawyer.
Aunt Susan Carpenter was a philanthropist. At the time of her adoptingthe boys she was reputed to be a millionaire. She gave her beautiful hometo the city for an Asylum for partially insane people and endowed it withfifty thousand dollars, after which the leading men in town raised fiftythousand more, thereby making it self-supporting. She was also on theboard of managers of many other charities, and was adored by hertownspeople.
Four years previous to her visit to New York, she had lost every penny ofher immense fortune,—lost it through the rascality of a large and welladvertised concern calling itself the "Great Western Cereal Company." Thewhole thing was a rotten affair from the first and was floated by tenunscrupulous men who after obtaining all the money they could fled fromthe country before the exposure came; that is, save three, one of whomwas arrested while the other two committed suicide. Aunt Susan wrotenothing of it to her sister lest it should worry her, and as she hadnever met her nephew's family in New York, and they knowing no one inAkron, they were in ignorance of the change in Aunt Susan's affairs andstill thought her a wealthy woman.
Mrs. Archibald Hollister—Ethel's mother—was worldly and ambitious;not so much for herself as for her daughter. Grand-mother Hollister,whose husband had belonged to one of New York's oldest families, ownedthe house in which they lived, free and clear. It was an old-fashionedbrown-stone affair near Riverside Drive. Archibald, her son, paid thetaxes in lieu of rent, but as his salary was only three thousand a yearit was extremely difficult to make both ends meet, and Grandmother had nomoney save w