“I'm glad you did, Mr. Fosdick, real glad. And, although I agree with you that the very worst thing to do, if we 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?”