Ethel would have never become a Camp Fire Girl excepting for her
great-aunt Susan.

Susan Carpenter was her Grandmother Hollister's only sister, living in
Akron, Ohio. Her family consisted of Mr. Thomas Harper and herself. Tom's
parents had been her friends, and when they were taken Aunt Susan legally
adopted him and his little brother Fred, but the younger one died before
graduating, while Tom went through college and was now a rising young
lawyer.

Aunt Susan Carpenter was a philanthropist. At the time of her adopting
the boys she was reputed to be a millionaire. She gave her beautiful home
to the city for an Asylum for partially insane people and endowed it with
fifty thousand dollars, after which the leading men in town raised fifty
thousand more, thereby making it self-supporting. She was also on the
board of managers of many other charities, and was adored by her
townspeople.

Four years previous to her visit to New York, she had lost every penny of
her immense fortune,--lost it through the rascality of a large and well
advertised concern calling itself the "Great Western Cereal Company." The
whole thing was a rotten affair from the first and was floated by ten
unscrupulous men who after obtaining all the money they could fled from
the country before the exposure came; that is, save three, one of whom
was arrested while the other two committed suicide. Aunt Susan wrote
nothing of it to her sister lest it should worry her, and as she had
never met her nephew's family in New York, and they knowing no one in
Akron, they were in ignorance of the change in Aunt Susan's affairs and
still thought her a wealthy woman.