Mother and I started this home-building job on June 28th, 1906. I was
twenty-five years of age; and she--well, it is sufficient for the
purposes of this record to say that she was a few years younger. I was
just closing my career as police reporter for the Detroit "Free Press,"
when we were married. Up to a few months before our wedding, my hours
had been from three o'clock, in the afternoon, until three o'clock in
the morning, every day of the week except Friday. Those are not fit
hours for a married man--especially a young married man. So it was
fortunate for me that my managing editor thought I might have
possibilities as a special writer, and relieved me from night duty.

It was then we began to plan the home we should build. It was to be a
hall of contentment and the abiding place of joy and beauty. And it was
all going to be done on the splendid salary of twenty-eight dollars a
week. That sum doesn't sound like much now, but to us, in January, 1906,
it was independence. The foundation of our first home was something less
than five hundred dollars, out of which was also to come the
extravagance of a two-weeks' honeymoon trip.

Fortunately for all of us, life does not break its sad news in advance.
Dreams are free, and in their flights of fancy young folks may be as
extravagant as they wish. There may be breakers ahead, and trials, days
of discouragement and despair, but life tells us nothing of them to
spoil our dreaming.

We knew the sort of home we wanted, but we were willing to begin
humbly. This was not because we were averse to starting at the top.
Both Mother and I had then, and have now, a fondness for the best things
of life. We should have liked a grand piano, and a self-making ice box,
and a servant, and an automobile right off! But less than five hundred