And such seasons are known in the life of nations. An easy-going traditionalism can be overturned in a single blast. Conventional standards, which seemed to have the fixedness of the stars are blown to the winds. Political and economic safeguards go down like wooden fences before an angry sea. The customary foundations of society are shaken. We must surely have had such experiences as these during the past weeks and months. What was unthinkable has become a commonplace. The impossible has happened. Our working assumptions are in ruins. Common securities have vanished. And on every side men and women are whispering the question,—Where are we? We are all staggered! And everywhere men and women, in their own way, are whispering the confession of the psalmist,—"My foot slippeth!"
Well, where are we? Amid all these violations of our ideals, and the quenching of our hopes, in this riot of barbarism and unutterable sorrow, where are we? Where can we find a footing? Where can we stay our souls? Where can we set our feet as upon solid rock? Amid the many things which are shaking what things are there which cannot be shaken?
"Things which cannot be shaken." Let us begin here: THE SUPREMACY OF SPIRITUAL FORCES CANNOT BE SHAKEN. The obtrusive circumstances of the hour shriek against that creed. Spiritual forces seem to be overwhelmed. We are witnessing a perfect carnival of insensate materialism. The narratives which fill the columns of the daily press reek with the fierce spectacle of labor and achievement. And yet, in spite of all this appalling outrage upon the sense, we must steadily beware of becoming the victims of the apparent and the transient. Behind the uncharted riot there hides a power whose invisible energy is the real master of the field. The ocean can be lashed by the winds into indescribable fury, and the breakers may rise and fall in crushing weight and disaster; and yet behind and beneath all the wild phenomena there is a subtle, mystical force which is exerting its silent mastery even at the very height of the storm. We must discriminate between the phenomenal and the spiritual, between the event of the hour and the drift of the year, between the issue of a battle and the tendency of a campaign. All of which means that "While we look at the things which are seen, we are also to look at the things which are not seen." Well, look at them.
THE POWER OF TRUTH can never be shaken. The force of disloyalty may have its hour of triumph, and treachery may march for a season to victory after victory; but all the while truth is secretly exercising her mastery, and in the long run the labor of falsehood will crumble into ruin. There is no permanent conquest for a lie. You can no more keep the truth interred than you could keep the Lord interred in Joseph's tomb. You cannot bury the truth, you cannot strangle her, you cannot even shake her! You may burn up the records of the truth, but you cannot impair the truth itself! When the records are reduced to ashes truth shall walk abroad as an indestructible angel and minister of the Lord! "He shall give His angels charge over thee," and truth is one of His angels, and she cannot be destroyed.
There was a people in the olden days who sought to find security in falsehood, and to construct a sovereignty by the aid of broken covenants. Let me read to you their boasts as it is recorded by the prophet Isaiah: "We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement: when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves." And so they banished truth. But banished truth is not vanquished truth. Truth is never idle; she is ever active and ubiquitous, she is forever and forever our antagonist or our friend. "Therefore thus saith the Lord God…your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand…and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-places." Thus said the Lord! We may silence a fort, but we cannot paralyze the truth. Amid all the material convulsions of the day the supremacy of truth remains unshaken. "The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."
"Things which cannot be shaken!" What is there which cannot be shaken? THE PASSION OF FREEDOM is one of the rarest of spiritual flames, and it can not be quenched. Make your appeal to history. Again and again militarism has sought to crush it, but it has seemed to share the very life of God. Brutal inspirations have tried to smother it, but it has breathed an indestructible life. Study its energy in the historical records of the Book or in annals of a wider field. Study the passion of freedom amid the oppressions of Egypt, or in the captivity of Babylon, or in the servitude of Rome. How does the passion express itself? "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, and may my right hand forget her cunning!" Study it in the glowing pages of the history of this country, that breath of free aspiration which no power of armament, and no menace of material strength was ever able to destroy. The mightiest force in all those days was not the power of threat, and powder, and sword, but that breath of invincible aspiration which was the very breath of God. And when we gaze upon stricken Belgium to-day, and look upon her sorrows, and her smitten fields, and her ruined cities, and her desolate homes, we can firmly and confidently proclaim that the breath of that divinely planted aspiration, her passion of freedom, will prove to be mightier than all the materialistic strength and all the prodigious armaments which seem to have laid her low. It is a reality which cannot be shaken.
There are other spiritual forces which we might have named, and which would have manifested the same incontestable supremacy: there is the energy of meekness, that spirit of docility which communes with the Almighty in hallowed and receptive awe: there is the boundless vitality of love which lives on through midnight after midnight, unfainting and unspent: there is the inexhaustible energy of faith which hold on and out amid the massed hostilities of all its foes. You cannot defeat spirits like these, you cannot crush and destroy them. You cannot hold them under, for their supremacy shares the holy sovereignty of the eternal God. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord;" and these spirits, the spirit of truth, the spirit of freedom, the spirit of meekness and love, are in fellowship with the divine Spirit, and therefore shall they remain unshaken.
[signed]J.H. Jowett
Somewhere in France
"Somewhere in France"—the day is tranquil, the sky unvexed, the green earth without a wound as I write; yet "somewhere in France" the day is torn with clamors, the sky is soiled with man's mounting hatred of man, and long, open wounds lie cruelly across the disputed earth. "Somewhere in France"—my mind goes back to remembered scenes: the crowd blocking the approach to a depot; white faces and staring eyes, eyes that alternately fear and hope, and in the crush a tickling gray line of returning PERMISSIONAIRES. "Somewhere in France"—on such a perfect day as this I see a little village street nestled among the trees, and hear the sound of the postman's reluctant feet tapping over the cobblestones—the postman that comes with the relentlessness of Fate—and at every house the horror of the black envelope. "Somewhere in France" the great immemorial cathedrals and the dotted, cool, moss-covered churches are filled with supplicating women and the black-framed, golden locks of children lifting their eyes before the Great Consoler as the sun breaks through the paling candle-flames. "Somewhere in France"—in its crowded stations I remember a proud womanhood, gray in the knowledge of sorrow, speeding its young sons and speaking the Spartan words. "Somewhere in France," in its thousand hospitals, the ministering white-clad angels are moving in their long vigils, calm, smiling, inspired. "Somewhere in France"—I see again imperishable fragments of remembered emotions; the women working in the vineyards of Champagne, careless of fate or the passing shells; the orphan children playing in the ruins of Rheims; a laughing child in bombarded Arras running out to pick up an exploded shell, a child in whom daily habits has brought fear into contempt; a skeleton of a church in far-flung Bethany, that still lives in a sea of fire, where a black-coated priest of the unflinching faith was holding his mass among kneeling men before an altar hidden in the last standing corner from which the shredded ruins had been swept.
"Somewhere in France"—I remember the volcanic earth, the strewn ruin of all things, the prostrate handiwork of man mingled with the indignant bowels of the earth, and from a burrowed hole a POILU laughing out at us in impertinent greeting, with a gaiety which is more difficult than courage.
"Somewhere in France"—in bombarded Arras, was it not?—I remember an old woman, a very old woman, leaning on her cane as she peered from her cellar door within a hundred yards of the smoldering cathedral. I wonder if she still lives, for Arras will be struggling back to life now.
"Somewhere in France"—what thronged memories troop at these liberating words! And yet, through all the passing drama of remembered little things, what I see always before my eyes is the spiritual rise of Verdun. Verdun, heroic sister of the Marne; Verdun, the battling heart of France—whose stained slopes are anointed by the blood of a million men. Verdun! The very name has the upward fury and descending shock of an attacking wave dying against an immemorial shore. To have seen it as I was privileged to see it in that historic first week of August, 1915, at the turning of the tide, at the moment of the retaking of Fleury and Thiaumont, was to have stood between two great spectacles: the written page of a defense such as history has never seen, and the future, glowing with the unquenchable fire of undying France. When I think of the flaming courage of that heroic race, my imagination returns always to the vision of that defense—not the patient fortitude before famine of Paris, Sebastopol or Mafeking, but that miracle of patience and calm in the face of torrential rains of steel which for months swept the human earth in such a deluge as never before had been sent in punishment upon the world. This was no adventure such as that gambling with fate which in all times and in all forms has stirred the spirit of man. Regiment after regiment marched down into the maw of hell, into the certainty of death. They went forward, not to dare, but to die, in that sublimest spirit of exultation and sacrifice of which humanity is capable, that the children of France might live free and unafraid, Frenchmen in a French land. They went in regiment after regiment, division after division—living armies to replace the ghostly armies that had held until they died. Days without nights, weeks without a breathing spell—five months and more. They lie there now, the human wall of France, that no artillery has ever mastered or ever will, to prove that greater than all the imagined horror of man's instinct of destruction, undaunted before the new death that rocks the earth beneath him and pollutes the fair vision of the sky above, the spirit of man abides superior. Death is but a material horror; the will to live free is the immortal thing.
[signed] Owen Johnson
The Associated Press
It is worth while to explain how the world's news is gathered and furnished in a newspaper issued at one cent a copy. First, as to the foreign news, which is, of course, the most difficult to obtain and the most expensive. In normal times there are the four great agencies which, with many smaller and tributary agencies, are covering the whole world. These four agencies are, as above noted, the Reuter Telegram Company, Ltd., of London, which assumes responsibility for the news of the great British Empire, including the home land, every colony except Canada, and the Suzerain, or allied countries, as Egypt, Turkey, and even China and Japan; and the Agency Havas of Paris, taking care of the Latin countries, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland and South America as well as Northern Africa; and the Wolff Agency of Berlin, reporting the happening in the Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Slav nations. These three organizations are allied with The Associated Press in an exclusive exchange arrangement. Subordinate to these agencies is a smaller one in almost every nation, having like exchange agreements with the larger companies.
Thus it happens that there is not a place of moment in the habitable globe that is not provided for. Moreover, there is scarcely a reporter on any paper in the world who does not, in a sense, become a representative of all these four agencies. Not only are there these alliances, but in every important capital of every country, and in a great many of the other larger cities abroad there are "A.P." men, trained by long experience in its offices in this country. This is done because, first, the organization is naturally anxious to view every country with American eyes; and, second, because a number of the agencies spoken of are under the influence of their Governments and, therefore, not always trustworthy. They are relied upon for a certain class of news, as for instance, accidents by flood and field, where there is no reason for any misrepresentation on their part. But where it is a question which may involve national pride or interest, or where there is a possibility of partisanship or untruthfulness, the "A.P." men are trusted.
Now, assume that a fire has broken out in Benares, the sacred city of the Hindus, on the banks of the Ganges, and a hundred or a thousand people have lost their lives. Not far away, at Allahabad or at Calcutta, is a daily paper, having a correspondent at Benares, who reports the disaster fully. Some one on this paper sends the story, or as much of it as is of general rather than local interest, to the agent of the Reuter Company at Calcutta, Bombay, or Madras; and thence it is cabled to London and Hongkong, and Sydney and Tokio. At each of these places there are Associated Press men, one of whom picks it up and forwards it to New York.
The wide world is combed for news, and an incredibly short time is delivered and printed everywhere. When Pope [Leo] XIII died in Rome the fact was announced by an Associated Press dispatch in the columns of a San Francisco paper in nine minutes from the instant when he breathed his last. And this message was repeated back to London, Paris, and Rome, and gave those cities the first information of the event. When Port Arthur was taken by the Japanese in the war of 1896 it came to us in New York in fifty minutes, although it passed through twenty-seven relay offices. Few of the operators transmitting it knew what the dispatch meant. But they understood the Latin letters, and sent it on from station to station, letter by letter.
When Peary came back from his great discovery in the Arctic Sea he reached Winter Harbor, on the coast of Labrador, and from there sent me a wireless message that he had nailed the Stars and Stripes to the North Pole. This went to Sydney, on Cape Breton Island, and was forwarded thence by cable and telegraph to New York.
The organization is cooperative in its character. As a condition of membership, each one belonging agrees to furnish to his fellow-members, either directly or through the Association, and to them exclusively, the news of his vicinage, as gathered by him for his own paper. This constitutes the large fountain from which our American news supply is drawn. But, as in the case of the foreign official agencies, if there be danger that an individual member is biased, or if the matter be one of high importance, our own trained and salaried staff men do the reporting. For this purpose, as well as for administrative work, there is a bureau in every leading city.
For the collection and interchange of this information we lease from the various telephone and telegraph companies, and operate with our own employees, something like fifty thousand miles of wires, stretching out in every direction through the country and touching every important center. To reach smaller cities, the telephone is employed. Everywhere in every land, and every moment of every day, there is ceaseless vigil for news.
People frequently ask what it costs thus to collect the news of the world. And we cannot answer. Our annual budget is between three and four million dollars. But this makes no account of the work done by the individual papers all over the world in reporting the matters and handling the news over to the agencies. Neither can we estimate the number of men and women engaged in this fashion. It is easy to measure the cost of certain specific events; as, for instance, we expended twenty-eight thousand dollars to report the Martinique disaster. And the Russo-Japanese war cost us over three hundred thousand dollars.
Such is an outline of our activities in what we call normal times. But these are not normal times. When the great European war broke on us, eighteen months ago, all of the processes of civilization seemed to go down in an hour. And we suffered in common with others. Our international relations for the exchange of news were instantly dislocated. We had been able to impress the governments abroad with the value of an impartial and unpurchasable news service, as opposed to the venal type of journalism, which was too common on the European continent. And in our behalf they had abolished their censorships. They had accorded us rules assuring us great rapidity in the transmission of our messages over their government telegraph lines. They had opened the doors of their chancelleries to our correspondents, and told them freely the news as it developed.
All the advantages ceased. The German news agency was prohibited from holding any intercourse with the English, French, or Russian organizations. Simultaneously, like commerce was interdicted in the other countries. The virtue of impartial news-gathering at once ceased to be quoted at par. Everywhere, in all of the warring lands the Biblical rule that "he that is not with me is against me," became the controlling view. Government telegrams were obviously very important and there was no time to consider anywhere any of the promised speed in sending our dispatches. Finally, censorships were imposed. This was quite proper in principle. Censorships are always necessary in time of war. But it is desirable, from every point of view, that they be intelligent, and that is not always the case.
Nevertheless, we have fared pretty well in the business of reporting this war. We have made distinct progress in teaching the belligerents that we hold no brief for any one of them, and, while each would much rather have us plead his cause, they are coming to see why we cannot and ought not do so. And our men are everywhere respected and accorded as large privileges as, perhaps, in the light of the tension of the hour, could be reasonably asked.
[signed] Melville E. Stone
Pan and the Pot-Hunter
They are not many who are privileged to learn that the forces of the Wilderness are as gods, distributing benefits, and, from such as have earned them, taking even handed reprisals. Only the Greeks of all peoples realized this in its entirety, and them the gods repaid with the pure joy of creation which is the special prerogative of gods.
But Greenhow had heard nothing of the Greeks save as a symbol of all unintelligibility, and of the gods not at all. His stock was out of England by way of the Tennessee mountains, drifting Pacific coastward after the war of the Rebellion, and he was a Pot Hunter by occasion and inclination. The occasion he owned to being born in one of the bays of the southerly Sierras where the plentitude of wild life reduced pot hunting to the degree of easy murder.
A Pot Hunter, you understand, is a business man. He is out for what he can get, and regards game laws as an interference with the healthful interactions of competition. Greenhow potted quail in the Temblors where by simply rolling out of his blanket he could bag two score at a shot as they flocked, sleek and stately blue, down the runways to the drinking places. He took pronghorn at Castac with a repeating rifle and a lure of his red necktie held aloft on a cleaning rod, and packed them four to a mule-back down the Tejon to Summerfield. He shot farrow does and fished out of season, and had never heard of the sportsmanly obligation to throw back the fingerlings. Anything that made gunning worth while to the man who came after you was, by Greenhow's reckoning, a menace to pot hunting.
There were Indians in those parts who could have told him better—notable hunters who never shot swimming deer nor does with fawn nor any game unaware; who prayed permission of the Wuld before they went to hunt, and left offal for their little brothers of the Wilderness. Indians know. But Greenhow, being a business man, opined that Indians were improvident, and not being even good at his business, fouled the waters where he camped, left man traces in his trails and neglected to put out his fires properly.
Whole hillsides where the deer had browsed were burnt off bare as your hand in the wake of the pot hunter. Thus in due course, though Greenhow laid it to the increasing severity of game laws framed in the interests of city sportsmen, who preferred working hard for their venison to buying it comfortably in the open market, pot hunting grew so little profitable that he determined to leave it off altogether an become a Settler. Not however until he had earned the reprisal of the gods, of whom in a dozen years he had not even become aware.
In the Spring of the year the Tonkawanda irrigation district was opened, he settled himself on a spur of San Jacinto where it plunges like a great dolphin in the green swell of the camissal, and throws up a lacy foam of chaparral along its sides. Below him, dotted over the flat reach of the mesa, the four square clearings of the Homesteaders showed along the line of the great canal, keen and blue as the cutting edge of civilization. There was a deep-soil level under the nose of San Jacinto—rabbits used to play there until Greenhow took to potting them for his breakfast—and a stream bubbled from under the hill to waste in the meadow.
Greenhow built a shack under a live oak there and fancied himself in the character of a proprietor. He reckoned that in the three years before his vineyard came into bearing, he could pot-hunt in the hills behind his clearing for the benefit of the Homesteaders.
It was altogether a lovely habitation. Camise grew flush with the meadow and the flanks of San Jacinto shivered and sparkled with the wind that turned the thousand leaves of the chaparral. Under the wind one caught at times the slow deep chuckle of the water. Greenhow should have been warned by that. In just such tones the ancient Greeks had heard the great god Pan laughing in the woods under Parnassus,—which was Greek indeed to the Pot Hunter.
Greenhow was thirty-four when he took out his preemption papers and planted his first acre of vines. For reasons best known to the gods, the deer kept well away from that side of the San Jacinto that year. Greenhow enlarged the meadow and turned up ground for a garden; he became acquainted with his neighbors and learned that they had prejudices in favor of game regulations, also that one of them had a daughter. She had white, even teeth that flashed when she laughed; the whole effect of her was as sound and as appetizing as a piece of ripe fruit. Greenhow told her that the prospect of having a home of his own was an incentive such as pot-hunting held out to no man. He looked as he said it, a very brother to Nimrod, for as yet the Pot had not marked him.
He stood straight; his eyes had the deep, varying blueness of lake water. Little wisps and burrs, odors of the forest clung about his clothing; a beard covered his slack, formless mouth. When he told the Homesteader's daughter how the stars went by on heather planted headlands and how the bucks belled the does at the bottom of deep canons in October, she heard in it the call of the trail and young Adventure. Times when she would see from the level of her father's quarter section the smoke of the Pot Hunter's cabin rising blue against the glistening green of the live oak, she thought that life might have a wilder, sweeter tang there about the roots of the mountain.
In his second Spring when the camissal foamed all white with bloom and the welter of yellow violets ran in the grass under it like fire, Greenhow built a lean-to to his house and made the discovery that the oak which jutted out from the barranca behind it was of just the right height from the ground to make a swing for a child, which caused him a strange pleasant embarrassment.
"Look kind o' nice to see a little feller playin' round," he admitted to himself, and the same evening went down to call on the Homesteader's daughter.
That night the watchful guardians of the Wild sent the mule-deer to Harry the man who had been a pot-hunter. A buck of three years came down the draw by the watercourse and nibbled the young shoots of the vines where he could reach them across the rabbit proof fencing that the settler had drawn about his planted acres. Not that the wire netting would have stopped him; this was merely the opening of the game. Three days later he spent the night in the kitchen garden and cropped the tips of the newly planted orchard. After that the two of them put in nearly the whole of the growing season dodging one another through the close twigged manzanita, lilac, laurel and mahogany that broke upward along the shining bouldered coasts of San Jacinto. the chaparral at this season took all the changes of the incoming surf, blue in the shadows, darkling green about the heads of the gulches, or riffling with the white under side of wind-lifted leaves. Once its murmurous swell had closed over them, the mule-deer would have his own way with the Pot Hunter. Often after laborious hours spent in repairing the garden, the man would hear his enemy coughing in the gully behind the house, and take up his rifle to put in the rest of the day snaking through the breathless fifteen foot cover, only to have a glimpse of the buck at last dashing back the late light from glittering antlers as he bounded up inaccessible rocky stairs. This was the more exasperating since Greenhow had promised the antlers to the Homesteader's daughter.
When the surface of the camissal had taken on the brown tones of weed under sea water and the young clusters of the grapes were set—for this was the year the vineyard was expected to come into bearing—the mule-deer disappeared altogether from that district, and Greenhow went back hopefully to rooting the joint grass out of the garden. But about the time he should have been rubbing the velvet off his horns among the junipers of the high ridges, the mule-deer came back with two of his companions and fattened on the fruit of the vineyard. They went up and down the rows ruining with selective bites the finest clusters. During the day they lay up like cattle under the quaking aspens beyond the highest, wind-whitened spay of the chaparral, and came down to feast day by day as the sun ripened the swelling amber globules. They slipped between the barbs of the fine wired fence without so much as changing a leg or altering their long, loping stride; and what they left the quail took.
In pattering droves of hundreds they trekked in from the camise before there was light enough to shoot by, and nipped once and with precision at the ripest in every bunch. Afterward they dusted themselves in the chaparral and twitted the proprietor with soft contented noises. At the end of the October rut the deer came back plentifully to the Tonkawanda District, and Greenhow gave up the greater part of the rainy season to auditing his account with them. He spent whole days scanning the winter colored slope for the flicker and slide of light on a hairy flank that betrayed his enemy, or, rifle in hand, stalking a patch of choke cherry and manzanita within which the mule-deer could snake and crawl for hours by intricacies of doubling and back tracking that yielded not a square inch of target and no more than the dust of his final disappearance. Wood gatherers heard at times above their heads the discontented whine of deflected bullets. Windy mornings the quarry would signal from the high barrens by slow stiff legged bounds that seemed to invite the Pot Hunter's fire, and at the end of a day's tracking among the punishing stubs of the burnt district, Greenhow returning would hear the whistling cough of the mule-deer in the ravine not a rifle shot from the house.
In the meantime rabbits burrowed under the wire netting to bark his young trees, and an orchardist who held the job of ditch tender along the Tonkawanda, began to take an interest in the Homesteader's daughter. Seldom any smoke went up now from the cabin under the Dolphin's nose. Occasionally there rose a blue thread of it far up on the thinly forested crest of San Jacinto where the buck, bedded in the low brush between the bosses of the hills, kept a look out across the gullies from which Greenhow attempted to ambuscade him. Day by day the man would vary the method of approach until almost within rifle range, and then the wind would change or there would be the click of gravel underfoot, or the scrape of a twig on stiff overalls, and suddenly the long oval ears would slope forward, the angular lines flow into grace and motion and the game would begin again.
Greenhow killed many deer that season and got himself under suspicion of the game warden, but never THE deer; and a very subtle change came over him, such a change as marks the point at which a man leaves off being hunter to become the hunted. He began to sense, with vague reactions of resentment, the personality of Power.
It was about the end of the rains that the DITCH TENDER who was also an orchardist, took the Homesteader's daughter to ride on his unoccupied Sunday afternoon. He had something to say to her which demanded the wide, uninterrupted space of day. They went up toward the roots of the mountain between the green dikes of the chaparral, and he was so occupied with watching the pomegranate color of her cheeks and the nape of her neck where the sun touched it, that he failed to observe that it was she who turned the horses into the trail that led off the main road toward the shack of the Pot Hunter. The same change that had come over the man had fallen on his habitation. through the uncurtained window they saw heaps of unwashed dishes and the rusty stove, and along the eaves of the lean-to, a row of antlers bleaching.
"There's really no hope for a man," said the ditch tender, "once he gets THAT habit. It's worse than drink."
"Perhaps," said the Homesteader's daughter, "if he had any one at home who cared…" She was looking down at the bindweed that had crept about the roots of a banksia rose she had once given the Pot Hunter out of her own garden, and she sighed, but the ditch tender did not notice that either. He was thinking this was so good an opportunity for what he had to say that he drew the horses toward the end of the meadow where the stream came in, and explained to her particularly just what it meant to a man to have somebody at home who cared.
The Homesteader's daughter leaned against the oak as she listened, and lifted up her clear eyes with a light in them that was like a flash out of the deep, luminous eye of day, which caused the ditch tender the greatest possible satisfaction. He did not think it strange, immediately he had her answer, to hear the titter of the leaves of the lilac and the sudden throaty chuckle of the water.
"I am so happy," laughed the ditch tender, "that I fancy the whole world is laughing with me."
All this was not so long as you would imagine to look at the Pot Hunter. As time went on the marking of the pot came out on him very plainly. He acquired the shifty, sidelong gait of the meaner sort of predatory creatures. His clothes, his beard, his very features have much the appearance that his house has, as if the owner of it were distant on another occupation, and the camise has regained a considerable portion of his clearing. Owing to the vigilance of the game warden his is not a profitable business; also he is in disfavor with the homesteaders along the Tonkawanda who credit him with the disappearance of the mule-deer, once plentiful in that district. A solitary specimen is occasionally met by sportsmen along the back of San Jacinto, exceedingly gun wary. But if Greenhow had known a little more about the Greeks it might all have turned out quite differently.
[signed] Mary Austin
Men of the Sea
The afternoon sun etched our shadows on the whitewashed wall behind us. Acres of grain and gorse turned the moorland golden under a windy blue sky. In front of us the Bay of Biscay burned sapphire to the horizon.
"You men of the sea," I said, "attain a greater growth of soul than do we whose roots are in the land. You are men of wider spiritual vision, of deeper capacity than are we."
The coastguard's weather-beaten visage altered subtly.
"How can that be, Monsieur? Our sins stalk us like vast red shadows.We live violently, we men of the sea."
"But you really LIVE—spiritually and physically. You attain a spiritual growth, a vision, an understanding, a depth seldom reached by us:—a wide kindness, a charity, a noble humanity outside the circumference of our experience."
He said, looking seaward out of vague, sea-gray eyes: "We drink too deeply. We love too often. We men of the sea have great need of intercession and of prayer."
"Not YOU."
"There was a girl at Rosporden…. And one at Bannalec…. And others…from the ends of the earth to the ends of it…We Icelanders drank deep. And afterwards…in the China seas…."
His gray Breton eyes brooded on the flowing sapphire of the sea; the low sun painted his furrowed face red.
"Not one among you but lays down his life for others as quietly and simply as he fills his pipe. From the rocking mizzen you look down calmly upon the world of men tossing with petty and complex passions—look down with the calm, kindly comprehension of a mature soul which has learned something of Immortal toleration. The scheme of things is clearer to you than to us; your pity, wiser; our faith more logical."
"We are children," he muttered, "we men of the sea."
I have tried to say so—in too many words," said I.
My dog looked up at me, then with a slight sigh settled himself again beside the game bag and tucked his nose under his flank. On the whitewashed walls of the ancient, ruined fort behind us our shadows towered in the red sunset.
I turned and looked at the roofless, crumbling walls, then at the coast where jeweled surf tumbled, stained with crimson.
These shores had been washed with a redder stain in years gone by: these people were forever stamped with the eradicable scar of suffering borne by generations dead. The centuries had never spared them.
And, as I brooded there, watching two peasants, father and son, grubbing out the gorse below us to make a place for future wheat, the rose surf beyond seemed full of little rosy children and showy women, species of the endless massacres that this sad land had endlessly endured.
"They struck you hard and deep," I said, thinking of the past.
"Deep, Monsieur," he replied, understanding me. "Deep as your people's hatred."
"Oh, poor ça"—he made a vague gesture. "The dead are dead," he said, leaning over and opening my game bag to look into it and sort and count the few braces of partridge, snipe and widgeon.
Presently, from below, the peasants at work in the gorse, shouted up to us something that I did not understand.
They were standing close together, leaning on mattock and spade, grouped around something in the gorse.
"What do they say?" I asked.
"They have found a soldier's body."
"A body?"
"Long dead, Monsieur. The skeleton of one of these who scourged this coast in the old days."
He rose and started leisurely down through the flowering gorse. I followed, and my dog followed me.
In the shallow excavation there lay a few bones and shreds and bits of tarnished metal.
I stooped and picked up a button and a belt buckle. The royal arms and the Regimental number were decipherable on the brasses. One of the peasants said:
"In Quimper lives a rich man who pays for relics. God, in his compassion, sends us poor men these bones."
The coastguard said: "God sends them to you for decent internment.Not to sell."
"But," retorted the peasant, "these bones and bits of brass belonged to one of those who came here with fire and sword. Need we respect our enemies who slew without pity young and old? And these bones are very ancient."
"The living must respect the dead, Jean Le Locard."
"I am poor," muttered Le Locard. "We Bretons are born to misery and sorrow. Life is very hard. Is it any harm if I sell these bones and brasses to a rich man, and buy a little bread for my wife and little ones?"
The coastguard shook his head gravely: "We Bretons may go hungry and naked, but we cannot traffic in death. Here lies a soldier, a hundred years hidden under the gorse. Nevertheless—"
He touched his cap in salute. Slowly the peasants lifted their caps and stood staring down at the bones, uncovered.
"Make a grave," said the coastguard simply. He pointed up at the old graveyard on the cliff above us. Then, touching my elbow, he turned away with me toward the little hamlet across the moors.
"Let us find the Curé," he murmured. "We men of the sea should salute the death God sends with the respect we owe to all His gifts to man."
Our three gigantic shadows led us back across the moor,—my dog, myself, and the gray-eyed silent man who knew the sea,—and something perhaps, of the sea's Creator:—and much of his fellow men.
[signed] Robert W. Chambers
Jim—A Soldier of the King
We were machine gunners of the British Army stationed "Somewhere in France" and had just arrived at our rest billets, after a weary march from the front line sector.
The stable we had to sleep in was an old, ramshackle affair, absolutely over-run with rats. Great, big, black fellows, who used to chew up our leather equipment, eat our rations, and run over out bodies at night. German gas had no effect on these rodents; in fact, they seemed to thrive on it.
The floor space would comfortably accommodate about twenty men lying down, but when thirty-three, including equipment, were crowded into it, it was nearly unbearable.
The roof and walls were full of shell holes. When it rained, a constant drip, drip, drip was in order. We were so crowded that if a fellow was unlucky enough (and nearly all of us in this instance were unlucky) to sleep under a hole, he had to grin and bear it. It was like sleeping beneath a shower bath.
At one end of the billet, with a ladder leading up to it, was a sort of grain bin, with a door in it. This place was the headquarters of our guests, the rats. Many a stormy cabinet meeting was held there by them. Many a boot was thrown at it during the night to let them know that Tommy Atkins objected to the matter under discussion. Sometimes one of these missiles would ricochet, and land on the upturned countenance of a snoring Tommy, and for about half an hour even the rats would pause in admiration of his flow of language.
On the night in question we flopped down in our wet clothes, and were soon asleep. As was usual, No. 2 gun's crew were together.
The last time we had rested in this particular village, it was inhabited by civilians, but now it was deserted. An order had been issued, two days previous to our arrival, that all civilians should move farther back of the line.
I had been asleep about two hours when I was awakened by Sailor Bill shaking me by the shoulder. He was trembling like a leaf, and whispered to me:
"Wake up, Yank, this ship's haunted. There's some one aloft who's been moaning for the last hour. Sounds like the wind in the rigging. I ain't scared of humans or Germans, but when it comes to messin' in with spirits it's time for me to go below. Lend your ear and cast your deadlights on that grain locker, and listen."
I listened sleepily for a minute or so, but could hear nothing. Coming to the conclusion that Sailor Bill was dreaming things, I was again soon asleep.
Perhaps fifteen minutes had elapsed when I was rudely awakened.
"Yank, for God's sake, come aboard and listen!" I listened and sure enough, right out of that grain bin overhead came a moaning and whimpering, and then a scratching against the door. My hair stood on end. Blended with the drip, drip of the rain, and the occasional scurrying of a rat overhead, that noise had a super-natural sound. I was really frightened; perhaps my nerves were a trifle unstrung from our recent tour in the trenches.
I awakened "Ikey" Honney, while Sailor Bill roused "Happy" Houghton and "Hungry" Foxcroft.
Hungry's first words were, "What's the matter, breakfast ready?"
In as few words as possible, we told them what had happened. By the light of the candle I had lighted, their faces appeared as white as chalk. Just then the whimpering started again, and we were frozen with terror. The tension was relieved by Ikey's voice:
"I admint I'm afraid of ghosts, but that sounds like a dog to me.Who's going up the ladder to investigate?"
No one volunteered.
I had an old deck of cards in my pocket. Taking them out, I suggested cutting, the low man to go up the ladder. They agreed. I was the last to cut. I got the ace of clubs. Sailor Bill was stuck with the five of diamonds. Upon this, he insisted that it should be the best two out of three cuts, but we overruled him, and he was unanimously elected for the job.
With a "So long, mates, I'm going aloft," he started toward the ladder, with the candle in his hand, stumbling over the sleeping forms of many. Sundry grunts, moans, and curses followed in his wake.
As soon as he started to ascend the ladder, a "tap-tap-tap" could be heard from the grain bin. We waited in fear and trembling the result of his mission. Hungry was encouraging him with "Cheero, mate, the worst is yet to come."
After many pauses, Bill reached the top of the ladder and opened the door. We listened with bated breath. Then he shouted:
"Blast my deadlights, if it ain't a poor dog! Come alongside mate, you're on a lee shore, and in a sorry plight."
Oh, what a relief those words were to us.
With the candle in one hand and a dark object under his arm, Bill returned and deposited in our midst the sorriest-looking specimen of a cur dog you ever set eyes on. It was so weak it couldn't stand. But that look in its eyes—just gratitude, plain gratitude. Its stump of a tail was pounding against my mess tin and sounded just like a message in the Morse code. Happy swore that it was sending S O S.
We were a lot of school children, every one wanting to help and making suggestions at the same time. Hungry suggested giving it something to eat, while Ikey wanted to play on his infernal jew's harp, claiming it was a musical dog. Hungry's suggestion met our approval, and there was a general scramble for haversacks. All we could muster was some hard bread and a big piece of cheese.
His nibs wouldn't eat bread, and also refused the cheese, but not before sniffling it for a couple of minutes. I was going to throw the cheese away, but Hungry said he would take it. I gave it to him.
We were in a quandary. It was evident that the dog was starving and in a very weak condition. Its coat was lacerated all over, probably from the bites of rats. That stump of a tail kept sending S O S against my mess tin. Every tap went straight to our hearts. We would get something to eat for that mutt if we were shot for it.
Sailor Bill volunteered to burglarize the quartermaster's stores for a can of unsweetened condensed milk, and left on his perilous venture. He was gone about twenty minutes. During his absence, with the help of a bandage and a capsule of iodine, we cleaned the wounds made by the rats. I have bandaged many a wounded Tommy, but never received the amount of thanks that that dog gave with its eyes.
Then the billet door opened and Sailor Bill appeared. He looked like the wreck of the HESPERUS, uniform torn, covered with dirt and flour, and a beautiful black eye, but he was smiling, and in his hand he carried the precious can of milk.
We asked no questions, but opened the can. Just as we were going to pour it out, Happy butted in and said it should be mixed with water; he ought to know, because his sister back in Blighty had a baby, and she always mixed water with its milk. We could not dispute this evidence, so water was demanded. We could not use the water in our water bottles, as it was not fresh enough for our new mate. Happy volunteered to get some from the well—that is, if we would promise not to feed his royal highness until he returned. We promised, because Happy had proved that he was an authority on the feeding of babies. By this time the rest of the section were awake and were crowding around us, asking numerous questions, and admiring our newly found friend. Sailor Bill took this opportunity to tell of his adventures while in quest of the milk.
"I had a fair wind, and the passage was good until I came alongside the quartermaster's shack, then the sea got rough. The porthole was battened down, and I had to cast it loose. When I got aboard, I could hear the wind blowing through the rigging of the supercargo (quartermaster sergeant snoring), so I was safe. I set my course due north to the ration hold, and got my grappling irons on a cask of milk, and came about on my homeward-bound passage, but something was amiss with my wheel, because I ran nose on into him, caught him on the rail, amidships. Then it was repel boarders, and it started to blow big guns. His first shot put out my starboard light, and I keeled over. I was in the trough of the sea, but soon righted, and then it was a stern chase, with me in the lead. Getting into the open sea, I made a port tack and have to in this cove with the milk safely in tow."
Most of us didn't know what he was talking about, but surmised that he had gotten into a mix-up with the quartermaster sergeant. This surmise proved correct.
Just as Bill finished his narration, a loud splash was heard, andHappy's voice came to us. It sounded very far off:
"Help, I'm in the well! Hurry up, I can't swim!" Then a few unintelligible words intermixed with blub! blub! and no more.
We ran to the well, and way down we could hear an awful splashing. Sailor Bill yelled down, "Look out below; stand from under; bucket coming!" With that he loosed the windlass. In a few seconds a spluttering voice from the depths yelled up to us, "Haul away!"
It was hard work, hauling him up. We had raised him about ten feet from the water, when the handle of the windlass got loose from our grip, and down went the bucket and Happy. A loud splash came to us, and grabbing the handle again, we worked like Trojans. A volley of curses came from that well which would have shocked Old Nick himself.
When we got Happy safely out, he was a sight worth seeing. He did not even notice us. Never said a word, just filled his water bottle from the water in the bucket, and went back to the billet. We followed. My mess tin was still sending S O S.
Happy, though dripping wet, silently fixed up the milk for the dog. In appetite, the canine was close second to Hungry Foxcroft. After lapping up all he could hold, our mascot closed his eyes and his tail ceased wagging. Sailor Bill took a dry flannel shirt from his pack, wrapped the dog in it, and informed us:
"Me and my mate are going below, so the rest of you lubbers batten down and turn in."
We all wanted the honor of sleeping with the dog, but did not dispute Sailor Bill's right to the privilege. By this time the bunch were pretty sleepy and tired, and turned in without much coaxing, as it was pretty near daybreak.
Next day we figured out that perhaps one of the French kiddies had put the dog in the grain bin, and, in the excitement of packing up and leaving, had forgotten he was there.
Sailor Bill was given the right to christen our new mate. He called him "Jim." In a couple of days Jim came around all right, and got very frisky. Every man in the section loved that dog.
Sailor Bill was court-martialed for his mix-up with the quartermaster sergeant, and got seven days field punishment No. 1. This meant that two hours each day for a week he would be tied to the wheel of a limber. During those two-hour periods Jim would be at Bill's feet, and no matter how much we coaxed him with choice morsels of food, he would not leave until Bill was untied. When Bill was loosed, Jim would have nothing to do with him—just walked away in contempt. Jim respected the king's regulations, and had no use for defaulters.
At a special meeting held by the section, Jim had the oath of allegiance read to him. He barked his consent, so we solemnly swore him in as a soldier of the Imperial British Army, fighting for king and country. Jim made a better soldier than any one of us, and died for his king and country. Died without a whimper of complaint.
From the village we made several trips to the trenches; each time Jim accompanied us. The first time under fire he put the stump of his tail between his legs, but stuck to his post. When "carrying in" if we neglected to give Jim something to carry, he would make such a noise barking that we soon fixed him up.
Each day Jim would pick out a different man of the section to follow. He would stick to the man, eating and sleeping with him until the next day, and then it would be some one's else turn. When a man had Jim with him, it seemed as if his life were charmed. No matter what he went through, he would come out safely. We looked upon Jim as a good-luck sign, and believe me, he was.
Whenever it came Ikey Honney's turn for Jim's company, he was over-joyed, because Jim would sit in dignified silence, listening to the jew's-harp. Honney claimed that Jim had a soul for music, which was more than he would say about the rest of us.
Once, at daybreak, we had to go over the top in an attack. A man in the section named Dalton was selected by Jim as his mate in this affair.
The crew of gun No. 2 were to stay in the trench for over-head fire purposes, and, if necessary, to help repel a probably counter-attack by the enemy. Dalton was very merry, and hadn't the least fear or misgiving as to his safety, because Jim would be with him through it all.
In the attack, Dalton, closely followed by Jim, had gotten about sixty yards into No Man's Land, when Jim was hit in the stomach by a bullet. Poor old Jim toppled over, and lay still. Dalton turned around, and, just as he did so, we saw him throw up his hands and fall face forward.
Ikey Honney, who was No. 3 on our gun, seeing Jim fall, scrambled over the parapet, and through that rain of shells and bullets, raced to where Jim was, picked him up, and, tucking him under his arm, returned to our trench in safety. If he had gone to rescue a wounded man in this way he would have no doubt been awarded the Victoria Cross. but he only brought in poor bleeding, dying Jim.
Ikey laid him on the fire step alongside of our gun, but we could not attend to him, because we had important work to do. So he died like a soldier, without a look of reproach for our heartless treatment. Just watched our every movement until his lights burned out. After the attack, what was left of our section gathered around Jim's bloodstained body. There wasn't a dry eye in the crowd.
Next day, we wrapped him in a small Union Jack belonging to Happy, and laid him to rest, a soldier of the king.
We put a little wooden cross over his grave which read:
Although the section has lost lots of men, Jim is never forgotten.
[signed] Arthur Guy Empey
Heel and Toe
That man—it could only have been a man—who invented the Klinger darning and mending machine struck a blow at marriage. Martha Eggers, bending over her work in the window of the Elite Hand Laundry (washing delivered same day if left before 8 A.M.) never quite evolved this thought in her mind. When one's job is that of darning six bushels of socks a day, not to speak of drifts of pajamas and shirts, there remains very little time for philosophizing.
The window of the Elite Hand Laundry was a boast. On a line strung from side to side hung snowy, creaseless examples of the ironer's art. Pale blue tissue paper, stuffed into the sleeves and front of lace and embroidery blouses cunningly enhanced their immaculate virginity. White piqué skirts, destined to be grimed by the sands of beach and tee, dangled like innocent lambs before the slaughter. Just behind this starched and glistening ambush one glimpsed the bent head and the nimble fingers of Martha Eggers, first aid to the unwed.
As she sat weaving, in and out, in and out, she was a twentieth century version of any one of the Fates, with the Klinger darner and mender substituted for distaff and spindle. There was something almost humanly intelligent in the workings of Martha's machine. Under its glittering needle she would shove a sock whose heel bore a great, jagged, gaping wound. Your home darner, equipped only with mending egg, needle, and cotton, would have pronounced it fatal. But Martha's modern methods of sock surgery always saved its life. In and out, back and forth, moved the fabric under the needle. And slowly, the wound began to heal. Tack, tack, back and forth. The operation was completed.
"If I see you many more Mondays," Martha would say, grimly, tossing it into the heap at her side, "there won't be anything left of the original cloth. I should think people would realize that this laundry darns socks, but it doesn't manufacture 'em."
Before the advent of the ingenious mending machine I suppose more men than would care to admit it married largely because they grew so tired of seeing those eternal holes grinning back at them from heel and toe, and of feeling for absent buttons in a hastily donned shirt. The Elite laundry owed much of its success to the fact that it advertised alleviation for these discomforts.
If you had known Martha as I know her you would have found a certain pathos in the thought of this spare spinster performing for legions of unknown unseen men those homely, intimate tasks that have long been the duty of wife or mother. For Martha had no men-folks. Martha was one of those fatherless, brotherless, husbandless women who, because of their state, can retain their illusions about men. She had never known the tragedy of setting forth a dinner only to have hurled at her that hateful speech beginning with, "I had that for lunch." She had never seen a male, collarless, bellowing about the house for his laundry. She had never beheld that soul-searing sight—a man in his trousers and shirt, his suspenders dangling, his face lathered, engaged in the unbecoming rite of shaving.
Her knowledge of the home habits of the male biped she gleaned from the telltale hints of the inanimate garments that passed through her nimble hands. She could even tell character and personality from deductions gathered at heel and toe. She knew, for example, that F.C. (in black ink) was an indefatigable fox trotter and she dubbed him Ferdy Cahn, though his name, for all she knew, might have been Frank Callahan. The dancing craze, incidentally, had added mountainous stacks to Martha's already heaped up bins.
The Elite Laundry served every age and sex. But Martha's department was, perforce, the unwed male section. No self-respecting wife or mother would allow laundry-darned hose or shirts to reflect on her housekeeping habits. And what woman, ultra-modern though she be, would permit machine-mended stockings to desecrate her bureau drawers? So it was that Martha ministered, for the most part, to those boarding house bachelors living within delivery-wagon proximity to the Elite Laundry.
It was early in May that Martha first began to notice the white lisle socks marked E.G. She picked them from among the great heap at her work table because of the exquisite fineness of the darning that adorned them. It wasn't merely darning. It was embroidery. It was weaving. It was cobweb tapestry. It blended in with the original fabric so intimately that it required an expert eye to mark where darning finished and cloth began. Martha regarded it with appreciation unmarred by envy, as the artisan eye regards the work of the artist.
"That's his mother's darning," she thought, as she smoothed it with one work-scarred finger. "And she doesn't live here in Chicago. No, sir! It takes a small town mother to have the time and patience for that kind of work. She's the kind whose kitchen smells of ginger cookies on Saturday mornings. And I'll bet if she ever found a moth in the attic she'd call the fire department. He's her only son. And he's come to the city to work. And his name—his name is Eddie."
And Eddie he remained for the months that followed.
Now, there was nothing uncanny in Martha Eggers' deduction that a young man who wears white hose, miraculously darned, is a self-respecting young man, brought up by a worshiping mother who knows about ginger cookies and winter underwear, and whose Monday washing is fragrant with the clean-smelling scent of green grass and sunshine. But it was remarkable that she could pick this one needle from the haystack of socks and shirts that towered above her. She ran her hand through hundreds of garments in the day's work. Some required her attention. Some were guiltless of rent or hole. She never thought of mating them. That was the sorter's work. But with Eddie's socks it was different. They had not, as yet, required the work of her machine needle. She told her self, whimsically, that when the time came to set her crude work next to the masterly effects produced by the needle of Eddie's ma every fiber in her would shrink from the task. Of course Martha did not put it in just that way. But the thought was there. And bit by bit, week by week, month by month, the life, and aims, and ambitions, and good luck and misfortunes of this country boy who had come to the call of the city, were unfolded before the keen eye of the sparse spinster who sat stitching away in the window of the Elite Laundry.
For a long, long time the white hose lacked reinforcements, so that they began to grow thin from top to toe. Martha feared that they would go to pieces in one irremediable catastrophe, like the one-hoss shay. Evidently Eddie's job did not warrant unnecessary expenditures. Then the holes began to appear. Martha tucked them grimly under the glittering needle of the Klinger darner and mender but at the first incision she snapped the thread, drew out the sock, and snipped the stitches.
"His ma'd have a fit. I'll just roll 'em up, and take 'em home with me to-night and darn 'em by hand." She laughed at herself, a little shame-faced laugh, but tender, too.
She did darn them that night, in the twilight, and in the face of the wondering contempt of Myrt. Myrt dwelt across the hall in five-roomed affluence with her father and mother. She was one of the ten stenographers employed by the Slezak Film Company. There existed between the two women an attraction due to the law of opposites. Myrt was nineteen. She earned twelve dollars a week. She knew all the secrets of the moving picture business, but even that hideous knowledge had left her face unscarred. Myrt's twelve was expended wholly upon the embellishment of Myrt. Myrt was one of those asbestos young women upon whom the fires of life leave no mark. She regarded Martha Eggers, who dwelt in one room, in the rear, across the hall, with that friendly contempt which nineteen, cruelly conscious of its charms, bestows upon plain forty.
She strolled into Martha Eggers' room now to find that lady intent upon a white sock, darning needle in hand. She was working in the fast-fading light that came through her one window. Myrt, kimono-clad, stared at her in unbelief.
"Well, I've heard that when actors get a day off they go to the theater. I suppose it's the same idea. I should think you'd get enough darning and mending from eight A. M. to six P. M. without dragging it home with you."
"I'm doing it for a friend," said Martha, her head bent over her work.
"What's his name?"
"Eddie."
"Eddie what?"
Martha blushed, pricked her finger, bent lower. "Eddie—EddieGrant."
At the end of the next six weeks every pair of Eddie Grant's hose, heel and toe, bore the marks of Martha's workmanship. Then, quite suddenly, they ceased to appear. Had he gone back home, defeated? Had he moved to another neighborhood? Had he invested in a fresh supply of haberdashery? On Tuesday of the seventh week E. G.'s white hose appeared once more. Martha picked them from among the heap. Instantly she knew. Clumsily, painstakingly, they had been darned by a hand all unaccustomed to such work. A masculine hand, as plucky as it was awkward.
"Why, the poor kid! The poor little kid! Lost his job for six weeks, and did his own washing and mending."
That night she picked out the painfully woven stitches and replaced them with her own exquisite workmanship.
Eddie's new job was evidently a distinct advance. The old socks disappeared altogether. They had been darned until each one resembled a mosaic. In their place appeared an entirely new set, with nothing but the E. G. inked upon them by the laundry to distinguish them from hundreds of others. Sometimes Martha missed them entirely. then, suddenly, E. G. blossomed into silk, with clocking up the side, and Martha knew that he was in love. She found herself wondering what kind of girl she was, and whether the woman in the little town that was Back Home to Eddie would have approved of her. One day there appeared a pair of lovesick lavenders, but they never again bloomed. Evidently she was the kind of a girl who would be firm about those. Then, for a time—for two long weeks—E. G.'s hose were black; somber, mournful, unrelieved black. They had quarreled. After that they brightened. They became numerous, and varied. There was about them something triumphant, ecstatic. They rose to a paean.
"They're engaged," Martha told herself. "I hope she's the right kind of a girl for Eddie."
Then, as they sobered down and even began to require some of Martha's expert workmanship she knew that it was all right. "She's making him save up."
Six months later the Elite Laundry knew E. G. no more.
Myrt, strolling into Martha's room one evening, as was her wont, found that severe-faced lady suspiciously red-eyed. Even Myrt, the unimaginative, sensed that some unhappiness had Martha in its grip.
"What's the matter?"
"Oh, I don't know. Kinda lonesome, I guess. What's the news down at your place?"
"News! Nothing ever happens in our office. Honestly, some days I think I'll just drop dead, it's so slow. I took three hours dictation from Hubbell this morning. He's writing the 'Dangers of Dora' series, and I almost go to sleep over it. He's got her now where she's chained in the cave with the tide coming up, on a deserted coast, and nobody for miles around. I was tickled to death when old Slezak called me away to fill out the contract blanks for him and Willie Kaplan. Kaplan's signed up with the Slezak's for three years at a million and a half a year. He stood over me while I was filling it out—him and his brother Gus—as if I was going to put something over on 'em when they weren't looking."
"My land! How exciting! It must be wonderful working in a place like that."
Myrt yawned, and stretched her round young arms high above her head.
"I don't see anything exciting about it. Of course it isn't as bad as your job, sitting there all day, sewing and mending. It isn't even as if you were sewing on new stuff, like a dressmaker, and really making something out of it. I should think you'd go crazy, it's so uninteresting."
Martha turned to the window, so that her face was hidden from Myrt. "Oh, I don't know. Darning socks isn't so bad. Depends on what you see in 'em."
"See in 'em!" echoed Miss Myrtle Halperin. "See! Well for the love of heaven what can you see in mending socks, besides holes!"
Martha didn't answer. Myrt, finding things dull, took herself off, languidly. At the door she turned and looked back on the stiff little figure seated in the window with its face to the gray twilight.
"What's become of your friend What's-his-name that you used to darn socks for at home? Grant, wasn't it? Eddie Grant?"
"That was it," answered Martha. "He's married. He and his wife, they've got to visit Eddie's folks back home, on their wedding trip. I miss him something terrible. He was just like a son to me."
[signed] Edna Ferber
Those Who Went First
A distant bugle summoned them by day,A far flame beckoned them across the night.They rose—they flung accustomed things away,—The habit of old days and new delight.They heard—they saw—they turned them over-seas,—Oh, Land of ours, rejoice in such as these!
This was no call that sounded at their door,No wild torch flaming in their window space,—yet the quick answer went from shore to shore,The swift feet hastened to the trysting place,Laughing, they turned to death from peace and ease,—Oh, Land of ours, be proud of such as these!
High hearts—great hearts—whose valor strikes for usOut of the awful Dissonance of warThis perfect note,—in you the chivalrousYOUNG SEEKERS OF THE GRAIL RE-LIVE ONCE MORE,—Acclaimed of men, or fallen where none sees,Oh, Land of ours, be glad of such as these!
[signed]Theodosia Garrison
A Summer's Day
Once I wrote a story of a woman's day in Paris, a Perfect Day. It had to do with the buying of all the lovely trappings that are the entrappings of the animal which Mr. Shaw believes woman endlessly pursues. One of the animals was in the story, and there was food and moonlight, music and adventure.
I never sold that marvelous tale. For years it has peeked out at me from a certain pigeon hole in my desk with the anguish of a prisoner in the Black Hole of Calcutta, and with as little hope for its liberation into the glad air of a free press. Yet it is with me now in Paris. In that last distracted moment of packing, when all sense of what is needed has left one, it was thrust into a glove case like contraband cigarettes. There may have been some idea of remolding it with a few deceiving touches—make a soldier of the hero probably—but with the "love interest" firmly remaining. There was only one Perfect Day to a woman, I thought.
That was some weeks ago. I am now writing on the back of that romance for lack of paper, writing of another day, wondering as I work if the present day's adventures will have any quality that might hold the reader's eye. I dare not ask for the reader's heart when love does not stalk through the pages.
Paris is now an entrenched camp but one is not awakened by bugles, and the beat of drums is unheard as the troops march through the city. It was the regular "blump-blump" of military boots past my window which possibly aroused me into activity, although the companies crossing from station to cantonment no longer turn the head of the small boy as he rolls his hoop along the Champs Élysées. This troubles me, and I always go to the curb to watch them when I am in the street.
There was an instant's hesitation before I pulled up the refractory Venetian blind—the right rope so eager to rise, the left so indifferent to its improvement—an instant's dread. I was afraid "they" would be hopping about even this early in the morning, hopping, hopping—the jerking gait of the mutilated—the little broken waves of a sea of "horizon blue." But they must have been just getting their faces washed at the Salon, where once we went to see pictures and now find compositions more dire than the newest schools of painting.
On the other side the stretch of chestnuts, the taxicabs, returned to their original mission, were already weaving about in their effort to exterminate each other. Battling at the Marne had been but a slight deviation in their mode of procedure, yet when a cab recently ran down and killed a bewildered soldier impeded by a crutch strange to him, Paris raised its voice in a new cry of rage. Beyond the Champs Élysées, far beyond, rose the Eiffel tower. Capable, immune so far from the attacks of the enemy, its very outlines seem to have taken on a great importance. Once the giant toy of a people who frolicked, it now serves in its swift mission as the emblem of a race more gigantic than we had conceived.