ad been so long planning. Judge Sands went
on to say that the day he was compelled to sell his Seaboard stock he
would have to make public an announcement of his condition, as there
could be no sale without the court's consent. His closing was:

"My dear daughter, no one knows better than I the almost hopelessness
of expecting any relief from your operations. But so hopeless have I
become of late, so much am I reliant upon you, my dear child, and
eternal hope so springs in all of us when confronted with great
necessities, that I have hoped and still hope that you are to be the
saviour of your family; that you, only a frail child, are through God's
marvellous workings to be the one to save the honour of that name we
both love more than life; the one to keep the wolf of poverty from that
door through which so far has come nothing but the sunshine of
prosperity and happiness; the one, my dear Beulah, who is to save your
old father from a dishonoured grave. Dear child, forgive me for placing
upon your weak shoulders the additional burden of knowing I am now
helpless and compelled to rely absolutely upon you. After you have read
my letter, if there is no hope, I command you to tell me so at once,
for although I am now financially and almost mentally helpless, I am
still a Sands, and there has never yet been one of the name who shirked
his duty, however stern and painful it might be."

When I handed the letter back to Miss Sands, she said:

"Mr. Randolph, let me tell you and Mr. Brownley a little about my father
and our home, that you may see our situation as it is. My father is one of
the noblest men that ever lived. I am not the only one who says that--if
you were to ask the people of our State to name the one man who had done
most for the State as a State, most for her progressive betterment, most
for her people high and low, white and black, they would answer, 'Judge
Lee Sands.' He has been, and is, the idol of our people. After he was
graduated from Harvard, he entered the law office of my grandfather,
Senator Robert Lee Sands. Before he was thirty he was in Congress and was
even then reputed the greatest orator of our State, where orators are so
plentiful. He married my mother, his second cousin, Julia Lee, of
Richmond, at twenty-five, and from then until the attack of that ruthless
money-shark, led a life such as a true man would map out for himself if
his Maker grant