girl. More than ever, we needed a home of our own. But to need and to
provide are two different propositions. We needed a back yard; but back
yards are expensive; and though newspapermen may make good husbands they
seldom make "good money."

One evening Mother announced to me that she had seen the house we ought
to have. It had just been completed, had everything in it her heart had
wished for, and could be bought for forty-two hundred dollars. The price
was just forty-two hundred dollars more than I had!

All I did have was the wish to own a home of my own. But four years of
our married life had gone, and I was no nearer the first payment on a
house than when we began as man and wife. However, I investigated and
found that I could get this particular house by paying five hundred
dollars down and agreeing to pay thirty-five a month on the balance. I
could swing thirty-five a month, but the five hundred was a high
barrier.

Then I made my first wise business move. I went to Julius Haass,
president of the Wayne County and Home Savings Bank, who always had been
my friend, and explained to him my difficulties. He loaned me that five
hundred dollars for the first payment--I to pay it back twenty-five
dollars monthly--and the house was ours.

We had become land owners overnight. My income had increased, of course;
but so had my liabilities. The first few years of that new house taxed
our ingenuity more than once. We spent now and then, not money which we
had, but money which we were _going to get_; but it was buying
happiness. If ever a couple have found real happiness in this world we
found it under the roof of that Leicester Court home.