time
wrote: "You have lost one of the finest husbands I have ever known. Ever
since I have known the Parker family, I have considered their home life
as ideal. I had hoped that the too few hours I spent in your home might
be multiplied many times in coming years. . . . I have never known a man
more in love with a woman than Carl was with you."

So I write of him for these reasons: because I must, to ease my own
pent-up feelings; because his life was so well worth writing about;
because so many friends have sent word to me: "Some day, when you have
the time, I hope you will sit down and write me about Carl"--the newer
friends asking especially about his earlier years, the older friends
wishing to know of his later interests, and especially of the last
months, and of--what I have written to no one as yet--his death. I can
answer them all this way.

And, lastly, there is the most intimate reason of all. I want our
children to know about their father--not just his academic worth, his
public career, but the life he led from day to day. If I live till they
are old enough to understand, I, of course, can tell them. If not, how
are they to know? And so, in the last instance, this is a document for
them.

C.S.P.
March 17, 1919

AN AMERICAN IDYLL

CHAPTER I

Such hosts of memories come tumbling in on me. More than fifteen years
ago, on September 3, 1903, I met Carl Parker. He had just returned to
college, two weeks late for the beginning of his Senior year. There was
much concern among his friends, for he had gone on a two months'
hunting-trip into the wilds of Idaho, and had planned to return in time
for college. I met him his first afternoon in Berkeley. He was on the
top of a step-ladder, helping put up an awning for our sorority dance
that evening, uttering his proverbial joyous banter to any one who came
along, be it the man with the cakes, the sedate house-mother, fellow
awning-hangers, or the girls busying about.

Thus he was introduced to me--a Freshman of two weeks. He called down
gayly, "How do you do, young lady?" Within a week we were fast friends,
I looking up to him as a Freshman would to a Senior, and a Senior seven
years older than herself at that. Within a month I remember deciding
that, if ever I became engaged, I would tell Carl Parker before I told
any one else on earth!

After about two months, he called one evening with his pictur