Well, I have been having a very remarkable experience, and not only myself and Pa, but all the United States as well; the excitement spread all over the country. I am going to put this down to tell my grandchildren about, for I hope they never will have such a time as we all have had for the past few weeks. I went with Pa to do a little shopping because my dearest girl friend, Mary Potter, of Brookline, had a birthday, and I did, at last, but such a time. I went to the counter where diamond rings were displayed and selected a beauty—Pa said he could not have picked out a better one for the money himself—and I took my purse, opened it to get the $200 to pay for my friend’s present, when I found my purse empty but for a few small silver pieces. I gasped for breath and told Pa. He looked at the purse and declared he knew it was clasped tight when he took it from his pocket inside his vest to give me, and I knew I placed three hundred in one hundred dollar bills in the purse before I started. Pa got the three new bills at my bank that very morning, but they were gone, and no sign of how, or when.

Pa said: “Never mind, Elsie, I have some money myself, also I happen to have my check-book, so you can have the ring just the same. I don’t care for the loss of that three hundred dollars so much as the peculiar way of its disappearance, but perhaps you left it at home in your room.” The clerk said I could telephone and ask, which I did. Ma answered the phone and looked in my room and asked the servants, but no money was found, or had been seen. Well, Pa took out his pocketbook and said I could have what bills he had, which was one hundred and fifty dollars, and give a check for the other fifty, so while he was talking he was opening his pocketbook, and he too started, and gasped for breath, for no bills were to be found, nothing but two silver quarters did Pa’s pocketbook contain, and they were as mum as oysters. Pa said: “Elsie, I don’t understand this. Child, we have been robbed since we left home, but I am at a loss how and when; I am also sure I had one hundred and fifty dollars, besides these quarters, in my pocketbook, but they are all that is left to tell the tale, and they don’t tell it.” We both laughed like two kids—I felt like crying, and Pa said the cold shivers were playing up and down his spine. So he wrote a check for the two hundred dollars and I took the ring and we went directly home and told Ma. Poor Ma couldn’t understand it any more than we did.

Pa went to the police station and reported his loss, also my loss, too. The sergeant said it did look queer. However, we looked all over the house, but not a sign of the missing bank-notes. Before twelve o’clock that day the police were nearly wild, for hundreds had reported losses of from five dollars to one thousand in bills, no one had a sign of a bill on his person—people seemed to be going mad, for every one would swear they had so much money in the morning and some time during the day it disappeared like the dew before a hot August sun. The police were at work on the case, so were the newspapers.

Hearst’s “American” got the real first news; said a man in a big house in the suburbs had all the money that had been lost, but not much came to light till some days later, for the house had a high stone wall and was guarded by big men, who said Mr. Worthington, the author, was busy writing a book on his European travels and could not be disturbed, so no one was let into the author’s house. Mr. Worthington was also a clever scientist—although no one knew that except his servants. He was always seeking to find some new hidden power he believed to be attraction, that was yet unsolved, so he spent his life among his books in study, also making experiments and writing when nothing of greater interest came to hand. For a few days he had been operating a peculiar machine that in appearance looked like a telegraph instrument, with the result that had caused all the commotion in town those few days. It seemed he had dreamed that a combination of chemicals, used with the peculiar machine, would attract money to it on account of the silk in the paper money was made of. It would go through everything except a vault; leather was no protection at all, and no one could explain it, and when the servants waited till ten A. M. on the fifth day, not having seen or heard of the author after leaving his food in the dining-room that was eaten always, till the dinner the night before—which was the general cause of alarm—they pushed in the door. Well, they tried. It would not yield much, but it was dark and stuffy, so they got a ladder and went to the window. They could see nothing but one solid mass of green, with now and then a gleam of yellow. What to do they did not know, so they telephoned the police, and they came and saw—what? Why, the poor man actually dead in the middle of a room crowded, packed down, with greenbacks, of all denominations from one dollar to one thousand dollars. The police said there were millions of bills; some of them went crazy looking at it, and some wondered how it could have been done. No one had an idea. The servants declared that Mr. Worthington had not left his house in ten days, and had not left his room except to go to the dining-room for five days, but he was in the midst of millions, and it had smothered him to death. A man was found who tried to explain how the machine attracted that silk in the money. Some believed him, others said he was a fool. The money was restored, as far as it could be. Pa and I got ours back because we had the first experience, but oh, my! such excitement I never heard or witnessed before. People didn’t dare carry any greenbacks in their purses or pockets for weeks after the whole thing was over. Pa said his check-book would be his closest friend for a time; said that infernal machine might go off any minute and make another collection, and he was going, for one, to be on the safe side. I am glad it couldn’t attract automobiles, for Pa would have lost his Brass Band and the whole business, and my car might have gone, too, then I would have had a good cry, for I most surely love my dear old Franklin. She is such a flyer, and I have had so much fun touring in that car.

I am glad, however, to be settled down once more to our normal life, and I feel much better. I, with many more, have had a horrible nightmare. I have related these facts as well as one could expect of a girl fourteen years of age; anything one may wish to know more about, my Pa can tell them, he’s a very learned and wise man, and he says he fully understands all about the attraction of the money to that machine—but I am sure I don’t and Levey Cohen says he don’t see any sense in it at all, and so I don’t feel so awfully alone in not understanding all such high science. Pa is way up in science.

I hear Pa calling for his girlie, so

Good-bye,

ELSIE.