e want to stop this team from
pullin' together, is to haul back on the bits and holler 'Whoa,' still
I'm kind of hopeful that, maybe . . . humph! I declare, it looks as if
I'd have to tell you another story. I'm gettin' as bad as Cap'n Hannibal
Doane used to be, and they used to call him 'The Rope Walk' 'cause he
spun so many yarns."

Fosdick laughed again. "You may go as far as you like with your stories,
Captain," he said. "I can grow fat on them."

"Thanks. Well, this ain't a story exactly; it just kind of makes the
point I'm tryin' to get at. Calvin Bangs had a white mare one time and
the critter had a habit of runnin' away. Once his wife, Hannah J., was
in the buggy all by herself, over to the Ostable Fair, Calvin havin' got
out to buy some peanuts or somethin'. The mare got scared of the noise
and crowd and bolted. As luck would have it, she went right through the
fence and out onto the trottin' track. And around that track she went,
hell bent for election. All hands was runnin' alongside hollerin' 'Stop
her! Stop her! 'but not Calvin--no SIR! He waited till the mare was
abreast of him, the mare on two legs and the buggy on two wheels and
Hannah 'most anywheres between the dasher and the next world, and then
he sung out: 'Give her her head, Hannah! Give her her head. She'll stop
when she runs down.'"

He laughed and his visitor laughed with him.

"I gather," observed the New Yorker, "that you believe it the better
policy to give our young people their heads."

"In reason--yes, I do. It's my judgment that an affair like this will
hurry more and more if you try too hard to stop it. If you don't try at
all so any one would notice it, it may run down and stop of itself, the
way Calvin's mare did."

Fosdick nodded reflectively. "I'm inclined to agree with you," he said.
"But does that mean that they're to correspond, write love letters, and
all that?"

"Why, in reason, maybe. If we say no to that, they'll write anyhow,
won't they?"

"Of course. . . . How would it do to get them to promise to write
nothing that their parents might not see? Of course I don't mean for
your grandson to show you his letters before he sends them to Madeline.
He's too old for that, and he would refuse. But suppose you asked him
to agree to write nothing that Madeline would not be willing to show her
mother--or me. Do you think he would?"

"Maybe. I'll ask him. . . . Yes, I guess likely he'd do that."

"My reason for suggesting it