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 a"—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 Cur," 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, and Happy'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:

PRIVATE JIM MACHINE-GUN COMPANY KILLED IN ACTION APRIL 10, 1916 A DOG WITH A MAN'S HEART

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 piqu 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—Eddie Grant."

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 us Out of the awful Dissonance of war This perfect note,—in you the chivalrous YOUNG 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 lyses. 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 lyses, 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.

It is not a relieving thought to such of us as still can play, that spirit, whether in the bosom of the boulevardier or his country cousin playing bowls in the cool of the evening, is the same that projects itself brilliantly across the battlefield; that the flash of a woman's eye as she invites a conquest is the flame upon the alter when sacrifice is needed; that the very gaiety which makes one laugh is a force to endure the deepest pits that have been dug for mankind. Even as I continually struggle with a lump in my throat which I often think should remain with me forever, I dare claim that of all the necessitous qualities in life the spirit of play must be the last to leave a race. Its translation to the gravities of living needs no bellows for the coaxing of the fire. It is ever burning upon the hearth of the happy heart.

The gilded statuary of the bridge of Alexander III, like flaming beacons in the sun's rays, waved us out and on to the Invalides to see the weekly awarding of medals. It is presumably the gay event of the week as the band plays, and there is some color in the throngs who surge along the colonnades to look into the court of honor. A portion of the great space is now accommodating huge shattered cannon and air craft of the enemy, their massiveness suggesting, as the little glittering medals are pinned upon the soldiers' breasts, that it is not so easy to be a hero and go a-capturing.

By the judicious wavings of famous autographs we were permitted the upper balcony to sketch the heroic ones within the hollow square formed by soldiers and marines. Directly beneath us stood the band with the brassard of the red cross on their arms, for they are still the stretcher bearers at the front. In the center of the square was a little group of men, seventy perhaps but the space was vast. Some were standing, some seated with stiff stumps of legs sticking out queerly. Here and there a nurse stood by a blind man, and there were white oblong gaps in the line which designated the beds of the paralyzed.

I had set my teeth and said that I must stand it when across the courtyard like a liquid stream of some spilled black portion came the mothers and the wives, who were to wear the ribbon their soldiers had earned in exchange for their lives. Or should there be little sons or daughters they received this wondrous emblem of their fathers' sacrifice. We could see the concerted white lift of handkerchiefs to the eyes of the black line of women as the general bestowed the honors. But the little children were tranquil.

With the beginning of the distribution the band, for which I had longed that it might give a glow to the war, swung into a blare of triumph. It was the first note of music we had heard in France. And as we all expressed our emotion with abandonment throughout the enlivening strains of "The Washington Post," I appreciated the infinite wisdom of marching drumless through the streets—of the divine lack of the bugles' song. For music, no matter its theme, makes happy only those who are already happy. To those who suffer it urges an unloosening of their grief—and grief must not go abroad in France.

There was an end to the drama. The guard of honor marched through the porte, banners flying. It was a happy ending, I suppose, though one might not think so by the triumphal chariots that entered the court to bear away the heroes—chariots with that red emblem emblazoned upon a white disc which would have mystified an early Caesar. But my thoughts were not entirely with the chief actors in the play, rather with the squad of soldiers who had surrounded them, the supers who would have enjoyed medals, too, and upon whom opportunity had not smiled; whose epic of brave deeds may never be read, and who, by chance, may go legless yet ribbonless up the Champs lyses.

"They" were hopping up the Avenue when we crossed it again, yet we all went on about our daily tasks as one passes the blind man on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirty-third Street. He may receive a penny, a twang of the heart strings, but he must be passed to go into the shop. My list was in my purse bearing but a faint resemblance to the demands of other years. I thought as I took it out what confusion of mind would have been my portion had I found it in my purse three summers ago, in what state of madness could any one prepare for a day in Paris such a program as: "Gloves, Hospital 232, furs, workshop for blind, shell combs, see my baby at Orphelinat, hair nets, cigarettes to my soldier, try on gowns, funeral of Am. airman," and on and on through each day's great accomplishment to the long quiet night.

Yet to buy freely and even frivolously in France need harass nothing more soulful than a letter of credit, and it was with less of guilt than of fear that I entered the courtyard of my furrier. I turned the button ever so gently with the same dread in my heart that I had suffered in going back to all of my shop keepers of previous summers. Would he still be there? Two years is a long time, and he was a young man. But he was there, wounded in the chest but at work in the expectation of being recalled. He did not want to go back, but of course if he was needed—

And I must lay stress on the magnificence of this hope that he might not have to return to the trenches. I have found many who do not want to go back. Fierce partisans of French courage deny this, reading in my contention a lack of bravery, but to me it is valor of a glorious color. For they do return without resentment, and, what is more difficult in this day of monumental deeds and minute bickerings, without criticism.

Like most of the men who came out of the trenches he had very little to say about them. It amused him to hear that my new fur coat purchased in America is of so fleeting a dye that I must dart into the subway whenever the sun shines. He was laughing quietly as he wished me a cloudy winter upon my descending the broad stone steps into the empty, echoing courtyard. The unexpected appreciation of my doubtful humor set me musing over the possibility of a duty new to Americans. It is the French who have stood for gaiety. We have warmed ourselves in their quick wit. Perhaps it is time for us to do our little clownish best to set them laughing.

Having made the resolve I failed meanly to put it into execution. I knew I was going to fail as the motor stopped before the great house in the rue Daru—the lordly house of exquisitely tinted walls although the colors are not seen by those who dwell within. There is a paved COUR beyond the high wall with great steps leading up to the hotel. At the right are the stables, where delicate fabrics are woven—the workmen with heads erect; where are special looms for those who, by the sad demands of this war, are denied hands as well as their two eyes. At the left is another building and here the men play in a gymnasium, even fence with confidence. In an anteroom is a curious lay figure that the most sensitive of the students may learn massage—it is the blind in Japan who give their understanding fingers to this work—and in the rooms above is a printing press, silent for lack of funds, but ready to give a paper of his own to the sightless. Only, at "The Light House" they will not accept that a single one of their guests is without vision. "Ah GUARDIENNE," cried one of the students to the American woman who has established our Light House methods over there, "you do not see the unevenness of this fabric for your eyes are in your way."

I was standing in the room where the plan of the house is set upon a table. It is the soldier's first lesson that he may know the turns and steps, and run about without the pitiful outstretching of arms. There were other callers upon the GUARDIENNE. A blind graduate who had learned to live (which means to work) had returned with his little old father, and both were telling her that he had enough orders for his sweaters from the "Trois Quartiers" to keep him occupied for two years. The family felt that he was established—so there was nothing more to fear. And then because we were all happy over it the old man and the woman and myself began to cry noiselessly. Only the blind boy remained smiling through the choking silence.

I went to the window and glared down into the gardens where other soldiers were studying at little tables with a professor for each, and I asked myself why, in this great exigency, I was not being funny and paying my debt to France. But there was nothing to be funny about. The thing that dried my tears was the recollection of the blind asylum of my youth, where the "inmates" never learned to walk without groping, where we were shown hideous bead furniture, too small for dolls, which was the result of their eager but misspent lives.

There was a gown to be ordered before noon and as I drove back through the Faubourg St. Honor I found myself looking fondly, thirstily into the shop windows, lifting my free eyes to the charming vagaries of old buildings, and again I made a vow although it had nothing to do with humor. On my dressing table rests a cushion of brocade and I shall carry it about as one who may yield to temptation carries a pledge, for the card which is attached chants out to me whenever my eyes rest upon it: "Soldat Pierre. Aveugle de la guerre. Bless Verdun." And as long as Soldier Pierre. Blind from the war. Wounded at Verdun can go on weaving his fabrics I pray that I may carry whatever burden may be mine with the unrebellious spirit.

Ah well! The robe took its place in the curriculum of my new Parisian day. It was to be a replica in color of that worn by the head of the house—her one of mourning was so bravely smart—for the business must go on and only the black badge of glory in fashionable form show itself in the gay salon. "Yes, we must go on," she said, "though every wife may give her mate. It is of an enormity to realize before one dies that he can be done without—that there are enough little ones to keep France alive and we women in the meantime can care for the country. Our men may die glad in that thought, but I think there must be a little of grief, too. It is sad not to be needed. Yes, Madame, blue for you where mine is black, and in place of the crpe something very brilliant. It is only Americans that we can make gay now, and it keeps the women in the sewing room of good cheer to work in colors. Too dear you think? Ah, no, Madame, observe the model!"

Conscious that she had taken the basest advantage of my sympathy, and glad that she had done so I went to djeuner with a feeling that I had deserved it which I might not otherwise have enjoyed. We were lunching at the restaurant on the Seine which felt for a short time the upheaval of war. Among the first called to the front had been the proprietor, and the august deputies whose custom it was to take their midday meal at this famous eating place had suffered from an unevenness of the cuisine. He is back at his establishment now, an ammunition maker on the night shift and the excellent and watchful patron at noon.

Our guests came promptly, for France still eats, although, if I can say anything so anomalous, does not stop to do so. The war talk continues albeit one carries it more lightly through a meal. A French officer arrived in the only automobile of his garage which the government had not commandeered. We looked down upon it stealthily that we might not give offense to his chauffeur, for the car is a Panhard in the last of its teens—which holds no terrors to a woman but is a gloomy age for a motor. An American architect from our Clearing House bowed over my hand a little more Gallic in these days than the Gaul himself. He has a right to the manners of the country. He had come over at the beginning of the war for a month and is determined to stick it out if he never builds another railway station. "To see the troops march through the Arc de Triomphe!" is the cry of the Americans, but the French do not express themselves so dramatically.

There is drama enough, though, even in the filing of papers at every American relief society. That and the new sensation of work serves to hold the dilettante of our country to his long task. "This is the president's office," you will be told in a hushed voice outside some stately door. Then one discovers in Mr. President a playmate of Mayfair or Monte Carlo or Taormina who may never previously have used a desk except as a support for the signing of checks.

Our friend had been engaged that morning upon the re-ticketing of the Lafayette Kits which had come back from the front because there was no longer a Gaspard to receive them. I put this down that any young girl of our country who does not hear from "her soldier" may understand the silence. And sometimes the poilu is a little confused, writing a charming letter of thanks to "Monsieur Lafayette" himself.

A man takes coffee at djeuner but finishes his cigar en route to work. We were at the edge of Paris before the Illustrator had thrown his away. We were not in the car of ancient lineage but in that relic of other days a real automobile without the great white letters of the army upon its sides and bonnet. Yet we were going into the heart of the Army. We would not be among the derelicts of battle that afternoon but with men sound of mind and body, and the thought was grateful that there would be nothing to anguish over. We were to visit two cantonments, rough barracks, in one of which the men gathered after their "permission" for a re-equipment; while at the second one were those soldiers who had become separated from their regiments, and who were sent there until the companies—if they existed—could be found, and the "isolated" again dispatched to the front.

I had anticipated a very relieving afternoon. The sun shone, the long road led to open country, and many circling aeroplanes over an aviation field nearby gave the air of a fte. Only the uniforms of the English and American women who are attached to each of these many cantonments suggested any necessitous combating of the grim reaper.

Yet they are not nurses of the body but of the spirit. From modest little vine covered sheds erected in each ugly open space they disperse good cheer augmented by coffee and cigarettes (and such small comforts as we Americans send them) after the regulation army rations are served by the commissary. They hear the men's stores, comfort the unhappy ones, chaff the gloomy ones, and when they have a moment's breathing space write letters to such of those as have asked for a correspondent.

One of these women—an American—was intent upon this occupation at the first canteen we visited. She admitted that she was tired but she must answer her letters. She was rather grave about it, "I write to sixty-eight," she said, "and I'll tell you why. At least I will tell you a little of it and you can read the rest. I was on night duty. There is always one of us here. The men have just come from visiting their homes and some of them are blue and cannot sleep. Rude to us? Oh, never! I had written letters almost all night and it was time to make the morning coffee, yet there was still one to do. I was tempted to put it aside. I didn't remember the man, but he had sent me a word of thanks. Well, somehow I did answer it between the moment of filling the cauldron and getting ready for the day. Here is his reply—it came this morning—"

Translating crudely from the letter I read aloud to our little circle: "Dear Madame, you have saved my life. I have no friends and no people left for I am from the invaded districts, so on one writes me. To-day I was on duty as the officer came into our trench with the mail. He called my name. He gave me permission to leave the listening post to receive your valued letter. While at his side a shell tore up entirely my post. I think you, Madame, that I am spared to fight for France—"

I regarded her with longing. She had been the controller of a destiny. I suppose we are all that when we bend our best efforts, but seldom are we so definitely apprised of the reward of untiring duty.

A petty officer passed by the shack with a paper in his hands. There were no sounding trumpets, but the men recognized the paper and rose from the ground where they had been lounging to hear him read the list of those who were to return immediately to the front. As the names were called each one summoned turned without comment or exclamation or expletive, picked up his kit dumped in a corner, slung on the heavy equipment, saw that the huge loaf of bread was secure—the extra shoes—refilled his canteen and moved over to the barred gate. Occasionally one shook hands with a comrade and all saluted the women of the little flower-bedecked hut. An order was given and the gate was opened. They filed out into the dusty road on their march to the railway station. The gate was closed. A little hill rose higher than the ground of the barracks and we could see them once again—stout little men in patched uniforms—bending unresistingly under their burdens, the heavy steel helmets gleaming but faintly in the sun. Another detachment entered the barracks.

It was coffee time now. The soldiers were lingering politely about with their tin cups in hand—not too expectantly, so as to assure the ladies that if by any chance there was no coffee they would not be disappointed. The gentlewoman in attendance had recently come from a canteen near the front where soup is made and often eight thousand bowls of it served in a day. The skin of her arms and hands is, I fear, permanently unlovely from the steam of the great kettles—or perhaps I should say permanently lovely now that one knows the cause of the branding. I offered to pour in her place and she assented.

The men came up to the little bar. I began to pour. I had thought I was about to do them a service. I knew with the first cup that it was they who were doing me one. All the unrest and misery of my idle if observing days in France was leaving me. I was pushing back the recollection with the sweetness of physical effort. I was at work. There is no living in France—or anywhere now—unless one is at work. I served and served and urged fresh cups upon them. They thought I was generous—I could not tell them that I had not known a happy instant till this coffee pouring time. I had not recognized that it was toiling with the hands that would bring a surcease to the beating of queries at my bewildered brain. There are no answers to this war. One can only labor for it and so, strangely, forget it.

Late that afternoon I had a cup of tea in a ground floor room of a big Parisian hotel which has been freely assigned to an American woman for the least known of all our relief work. I had come that I might argue with her into giving up her long task for a brief rest. My contention was to have been that she could stop at any time as her work is never recognized. I found her doing up a parcel of excellent garments for a man and three women. They were to be assigned to the family of a respected painter of the Latin Quarter. They will never know who is the middleman, and it has chanced that she has dined in company with her day's donation.

As I observed her tired tranquility I felt my argument growing pointless. Whether it was coffee or the unacknowledged dispenser of clothing to the uncrying needy it was service, and though my arm muscles ached I could understand that it is the idle boy in Paris which does not rest at night.

And so I come tot he last sheet of the romance which is serving so humbly my war-time needs. There is space for the dinner and the closing in of the gentle night thanks to the repeated, fervid declarations of the lovers on the other side of the paper. We had been with the men that afternoon. We were among the officers that evening. We dined at one of the great restaurants which has timorously reopened its doors to find eager families ready to feast honored sons. At one table sat three generations, the father of the boy concealing his pride with a Gallic interest in the menu, but the grandfather futilely stabbed the snails as his gleaming old eyes kept at attention upon the be-medalled lad. Pretty women, too, were there, subdued in costuming but with that amiable acceptance of their position which is not to be found among the more eager "lost ones" of other countries. And I enjoyed some relief in their evidence once more, and some inward and scarcely to-be-expressed solace in the thought that those soldiers who henceforth must go disfigured through a fastidious world can every buy companionship.

There was a theater attached to the restaurant. Through the glass doors we could see an iridescence of scant costumes, but the audience was light, and we ourselves preferred, as a more satisfactory ending to our day, to walk quietly toward the Arc de Triomphe which is waiting, waiting for fresh glories. On the other side of this last sheet of paper my lovers had so walked together. But upon looking over their passionate adventures I have discovered, at last, why the romance has never found a market. On one side and then on the other I have read and reread the two experiences. Yes, I find the LOVE-story curiously lacking in love.

[signed] Louise Closser Hale



Children of War



Not for a transient victory, or some Stubborn belief that we alone are right; Not for a code or conquest do we fight, But for the crowded millions still to come.

This, unborn generations, is your war, Although it is our blood that pays the price. Be worthy, children, of our sacrifice, And dare to make your lives worth fighting for.

We give up all we love that you may loathe Intrigue and darkness, that you may disperse The ranks of ugly tyrannies and, worse, The sodden languor and complacent sloth.

Do not betray us, then, but come to be Creation's crowning splendor, not its slave; Knowing our lives were spent to keep you brave, And that our deaths were meant to make you free.

[signed] Louis Untermeyer

Courtesy "Collier's Weekly."



Khaki-Boy



Where the torrent of Broadway leaps highest in folly and the nights are riddled with incandescent tire and chewing gum signs; jazz bands and musical comedies to the ticket speculators' tune of five dollars a seat, My Khaki-Boy, covered with the golden hoar of three hundred Metropolitan nights rose to the slightly off key grand finale of its eighty-first matine, curtain slithering down to the rub-a-dud-dub of a score of pink satin drummer boys with slim ankles and curls; a Military Sextette of the most blooded of Broadway ponies; a back ground of purple eye-lidded privates enlisted from the ranks of Forty-Second Street; a three hundred and fifty dollar a week sartorial sergeant in khaki and spotlight, embracing a ninety pound ingnue in rhinestone shoulder-straps. The tired business man and his lady friend, the Bronx and his wife, Adelia Ohio, Dead heads, Bald heads, Sore heads, Suburbanites, Sybarites; the poor dear public making exit sadder than wiser.

On the unpainted side of the down slithering curtain, a canvas mountain-side was already rumbling rearward on castors. An overhead of foliage jerked suddenly higher, revealed a vista of brick wall. A soldiers' encampment, tents and all, rolled up like a window shade. The ninety pound ingnue, withholding her silver-lace flouncings from the raw edges of moving landscape, high-stepped to a rearward dressing room; the khaki clad hero brushing past her and the pink satin drummer boys for first place down a spiral staircase.

Miss Blossom De Voe, pinkest of satin drummer boys, withdrew an affronted elbow, the corners of her mouth quivering slightly, possibly of their own richness. They were dewy, fruit-like lips, as if Nature were smiling with them at her own handiwork.

"Say, somebody around here better look where he's going or mama's khaki-boy will be calling for an arnica high-ball. What does he think I yam, the six o'clock subway rush?"

Miss Elaine Vavasour wound down the spiral ahead of Miss De Voe, the pink satin blouse already in the removing.

"Go suck a quince Blos. It's good for crazy bone and fallen arch."

"If you was any funnier, Elaine, you'd float," said Miss De Voe withdrawing a hair pin as she wound downward, an immediate avalanche of springy curls released.

Beneath the stage of the Gotham Theater a corridor of dressing rooms ran the musty subterranean length of the sub cellar. A gaseous gloomy dampness here; this cave of the purple lidded, so far below the level of reality.

At the door of Miss De Voe's eight by ten, shared by four, dressing room, one of the back drop of privates, erect, squarebacked, head thrown up by the deep-dipping cap vizor, emerged at sight of her, lifted hat revealing a great permanent wave of hair that could only be born not bought.

"H'lo, Hal."

"Hello, Blossum."

"Whose hot water bottle did you come to borrow?"

"Hot water bottle?"

"Yeh, you look like you got the double pneumonia and each one of the pneumonia's got the tooth ache. Who stole your kite, ikkie boy?"

Mr. Hal Sanderson flung up a fine impatient head, the permanent hair-wave lifting,

"We'll can the comedy, Blossum," he said.

She lowered to a mock curtsey, mouth skewed to control laughter, arms akimbo.

"We will now sing psalm twenty-three."

"Come to supper with me, Blos? You been dodging me pretty steady here lately."

She clapped her hand to her brow, plastering a curl there.

"Migaw, I am now in the act of dropping thirty cents and ten cents tip into my Pig Bank. Will I go to supper with him? Say, darling, will the Hudson flow by Grant's monument to-night at twelve? On a Saturday matine he asks me to supper with a question mark."

"Honest, Bloss, you'd hand a fellow a ha ha if he invited you to his funeral."

She sobered at that, leaning against the cold plastered wall, winding one of the shining curls about her fore finger.

"What's the matter—Hal?"

He handed her a torn newspaper sheet, blue penciled.

She took it but did not glance down.

"Drafted?"

"Yes," he said.

The voice of a soubrette trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created a remote sort of thunder. She stood looking up at him, her young mouth parted.

"I—oh, Hal—well—well, whatta you know about that—Hal Sanderson—drafted."

He stepped closer, the pallor coming out stronger in his face, enclosed her wrist, pressing it.

"Grover's drafted too."

"Grover—too?"

"He's three thousand and one. Ten numbers before me."

Her irises were growing, blackening.

"Well, whatta you know about that? Grover White, the world's dancing tenor, and Hal Sanderson the world dancing tenor's understudy, drafted! The little tin soldiers are covered with rust and Uncle Sam is going to—"

"Hurry, Bloss, get into your duds. I want to talk. Hurry. We'll eat over at Ramy's."

She turned but flung out an arm, grasping now his wrist.

"I—oh, Hal—I—I just never was so—so sad and so—so glad!"

The door opened to a slit enclosing her. In his imitation uniform, hand on empty carriage belt, Mr. Hal Sanderson stood there a moment, his face whitening, tightening.

In Ramy's glorified basement, situated in one of the Forties which flow like tributaries into the heady waters of Broadway, one may dine from soup to nuts, raisins and regrest for one hour and sixty cents. In Ramy's, courses may come and courses may go, but the initiated one holds on to his fork forever. Here red wine flows like water, being ninety-nine per cent., just that.

Across a water tumbler of ruby contents, Miss Blossom De Voe, the turbulent curls all piled up beneath a slightly dusty but highly effective amethyst velvet hat, regarded Mr. Sanderson, her perfect lips trembling as it were, against an actual nausea of the spirit which seemed to pull at them.

"Whadda you putting things up to me for, Hal? You're old enough to know your own business."

Blue shaved, too correct in one of Broadway's black and white checked Campus Suits, his face as cleanly chiseled and thrust forward as a Discobolus, Mr. Sanderson patted an open letter spread out on the table cloth between them, his voice rising carefully above the din of diners.

"There's fellows claiming exemption every hour of the day that ain't got this much to show, Bloss. I was just wise enough to see these things and get ready for 'em."

"You ain't your mother's sole support. What about them snapshots of the two farms of hers out in Ohio you gave me?"

"But I got to be in this country to take charge of her affairs for her—my mother's old, honey—ain't I the one to manager for her? Only child and all that. Honest, Bloss, you need a brick house."

"Well, that old lawyer that wrote that letter has been doing it all the time, why all of a sudden should you—"

He cast his eyes ceilingward, flopping his hands down loosely to the table in an attitude of mock exhaustion.

"Oh, Lord, Bloss, lemme whistle it, maybe you can catch on the. Brains, honey, little Hal's brains is what got that letter there written. I seen this coming from the minute conscription was in the air. Little Hal seen it coming, and got out his little hatchet. Try to prove that I ain't the sole one to take charge of my mother's affairs. Try to prove it. That's what I been fixing for myself these two months, try to—"

"Sh-h-h-h, Charley—"

"Brains is what done it,—every little thing of my mother's is in my care. I fixed it. Now little Blossy-blossum will you be good?"

He regarded her with cocked head and face receptive for her approval. "Now will you be good!"

She sat loosely, meeting his gaze, but her face as relaxed as her attitude. A wintry stare had set in.

"Oh," she said, "I see." And turned away her head.

He reached closer across the table, regardless of the conglomerate diners about, felt for her hand which lay limp and cold beside her plate, and which she withdrew.

"Darling," he said, straining for her gaze.

"Don't, Hal."

"Darling, don't you see? It's fate knocking at our door. There's not a chance rover can get exemption. He ain't eve got a fifth cousin or a flat-foot!"

"Maybe he could claim exemption on dandruff."

"I'm serious, honey. It's going to be one of those cases where an understudy wakes up to find himself famous. I can't fail if I get this chance, Bloss. It's the moment I have been drudging for, for five solid years. I never was in such voice as now, I never was so fit. Not an ounce of fat. Not a song in the part I don't know backwards. I tell you it's the hand of fate, Bloss, giving us a hand-out. I can afford now, darling, to make good with you. On three fifty a week I can ask a little queen like you to double up with me. From thirty-five to three fifty! I tell you honey, we're made. I'm going to dress my little dolly in cloth of gold and silver fox. I'm going to perch her in the suite de luxe of the swellest hotel in town. I'm—"

She pushed back from the table, turning more broadly from him.

"Don't," she said pressing her kerchief against her lips.

"Why—why what's the matter, Bloss? Why—why, what's the matter?"

"Don't talk to me for a minute," she said, still in profile; "I'll be all right, only don't talk."

"Why, Bloss, you—sick?"

She shook her head. "No. No."

"You ain't getting cold feet now that we got the thing before us—in our hand?"

"I dunno. I dunno. I—don't want nothing. That's all, nothing but to be left alone."

He sucked his lips inward, biting at them.

"Don't—don't think I ain't noticed, Bloss, that you—you ain't been the same—that you been different—for weeks. Sometimes I think maybe you're going cold on—on this long engagement stuff. That's why this thing is breaking just right for us, honey. I felt you slippin' a little. I'm ready now, Peaches, we can't go taxi-cabbing down for that license none too soon to suit me."

She shook her head, beating softly with one small fist into her other palm.

"No, Hal," she said, her mouth tightening and drawing down.

"Why—why, Bloss!"

Suddenly she faced him, her hands both fists now, and coming down with a force that shivered the china.

"You—you ain't a man, you ain't. You ain't a man, you—you're a slacker! You're a slacker, that's what you are, and Gawd, how I—how I hate a slacker!"

"Bloss—why, girl—you—you're cra—-"

"Oh, I've known it. Deep down inside of me I've known it since the day we found ourselves in the mess of this war. I knew it, and all those months kept kidding myself that maybe—you—wasn't."

"You—"

"Thought maybe when you'd read the newspapers enough and heard the khaki-boys on the street corners enough, and listened to—to your country pleading enough that—that you'd rise up to show you was a man. I knew all these months down inside of me that you was a slacker, but I kept hopin'. Gawd how I kept hopin'."

"You—you can't talk to me that way! You're—-"

"Can't I! Ha! Anybody can talk any old way to a slacker he wants to and then not say enough. You ain't got no guts you—you're yellow, that's what you are, you—"

"Blossum!"

"You, sneaking up to me with trumped up exemption stuff when your country's talking her great heart out for men to stand by 'er! Gawd! If I was a man—If was a man she wouldn't have to ask me twice, but before I went marching off I'd take time off to help the street cleaning department wipe up a few streets with the slackers I found loafing around under a government they were afraid to fight for. I'd show 'em. I'd show 'em if a government is good enough to live under it's good enough to fight under. I'd show 'em."

"If you was a man, Blossum, you'd eat those words. By God, you'd eat 'em. I'm no coward—I—"

"I know you're not, Hal—that's why I—I—"

"I got the right to decide for myself if I want to fight when I don't know what I'm fighting for. This ain't my war, this ain't America's war. Before I fight in it I want a darn sight to know what I'm fighting for, and not all the street corner rah rah stuff has told me yet. I ain't a bull to go crazy with a lot of red waved in my face. I've got no blood to spill in the other fellow's battle. I'm—-"

"No, but you—"

"I'm at a point in my life that I've worked like a dog to reach. Let the fellows that love the hero stuff give up their arms and their legs and the breath that's in them for something they don't know the meaning of. Because some big-gun of a Emperor out in Austria was assassinated, I ain't going to bleed to death for it. It's us poor devils that get the least out of the government that right away are called on to give the most, it's us—-"

"Hal, ain't—ain't you ashamed!"

"No. I ain't ashamed and I ain't afraid. You know it ain't because I'm afraid. I've licked more fellows in my time than most fellows can boast. I—I got the Fifty-fifth Street fire rescue medal to my credit if anybody should ask you. I—I—ask anybody from my town if any kid in it ever licked me. But I ain't going to fight when I ain't got a grudge against no man. Call that being a coward if you like, but then you and me don't speak the same language."

Her silence seemed to give off an icy vapor.

"That's what they all say," she said. "It's like hiding behind a petticoat, hiding behind a defense like that. Sure you ain't got a grudge. Maybe you don't know what it's all about—God knows who does. Nobody can deny that. There ain't nothing reasonable about war, if there was there wouldn't be none. That talk don't get you nowheres. The proposition is that we're at war, whatever you or anybody else may think of it."

"That's just it—we didn't have no say-so."

"Just the same, Hal Sanderson, this great big grand country of ours is at war, and needs you. It ain't what you think any more that counts. Before we was in war you could talk all you wanted, but now that we're IN, there's only one thing to do, only one, and not all your fine talk about peace can change it. One thing to do. Fight!"

"No government can make me—"

"If you want peace now it's up to you to help make it, a new peace and a grander peace, not go baying at the moon after a peace that ain't no more."

"You better get a soap box. If this is the way you got of trying to get out of something you're sorry for, I'll let you off easier—you don't need to try to—-"

She regarded him with her lips quivering, a quick layer of tears forming, trembling and venturing to the edge of her lashes.

"Hal—Hal—a—a fellow that I've banked on like I have you! It ain't that—you know it ain't. I could have waited for ten times this long. It's only I—I'm ashamed, Hal. Ashamed. there ain't been a single gap in the chorus from one of the men enlisting that my heart ain't just dropped in my shoes like dough. I never envied a girl on my life the way I did Elaine Vavasour when she stood on the curb at the Battery the other day crying and watching Charlie Kirkpatrick go marching off. Charlie was a pacifist, too, as long as the country was out of war, and there was something to argue about. The minute the question was settled, he shut up, buckled on his belt and went! That's the kind of a pacifist to be. The kind of fellow that when he sees peace slipping, buckles on and starts out for a new peace; a realer peace. That's the kind of a fellow I thought you—you—-"

Her voice broke then abruptly, in a rain of tears, and she raised the crook of her arm to her face with the gesture of a child. "That—that's the kind of a fellow I—I—-"

His cigarette discarded and curling up in a little column of smoke between them, he sat regarding her, a heave surge of red rising above the impeccable white of his collar into the roots of his hair. It was as if her denouncement had come down in a welt across his face.

"Nobody ever—nobody ever dared to talk like this to me before. Nobody ever dared to call me a coward. Nobody. Because it ain't so!"

"I know it ain't, Hal. If it was could I have been so strong for you all these months? I knew the way you showed yourself in the Fifty-fifth Street fire. I read about it in the papers before I ever knew you. I—I know the way you mauled Ed Stein, twice your size, the night he tried to—to get fresh with me. I know you ain't a slacker in your heart, Hal, but I—I couldn't marry a man that got fake exemption. Couldn't, no matter how it broke my heart to see him go marching off! Couldn't! Couldn't!"

"That's what it means, Blossum—marching off!"

"I know it, but how—how could I marry a man that wasn't fit to war his country's uniform even in a show. I—I couldn't marry a man like that if it meant the solid gold suite in the solid goldest hotel in this town. I couldn't marry a—a fake khaki-boy!"

"Ain't there no limit, Bloss, to the way you can make a fellow feel like dirt under your feet? My God! ain't there no limit?"

"There—there's nothing on earth can make a man of you, Hal, nothing on God's earth but War! Every once in a while there's some little reason seems to spring up for there bein' a war. You're one of them reasons, Hal. Down in my heart I know it that you'll come back, and when I get a hunch it's a hunch! Down in my heart I know it, dear, that you'll come back to me. But you'll come back a man, you'll come back with the yellow streak pure gold, you'll-you'll come back to me pure gold, dear. I know it. I know it."

His head was back as if his throat were open to the stroke of her words, but there was that growing in his face which was enormous, translucent, even apogean.

He tore up the paper between them, slowly, and in criss crosses.

"And you, Blossom?" he said, not taking his eyes, with their growing lights, off her.

"Why, I'll be waiting, Hal," she said, the pink coming out to flood her face, "I'll be waiting—Sweetheart."

[signed] Fannie Hurst



The Married Slacker



[This is a comic strip in three panels. I'll do my best to describe each panel and then put the text which comes beneath the panel.]

[Panel 1: A man and woman sit at a meal with pictures of Washington and Lincoln glowering from the wall in the man's full view behind the woman. The woman is reading a paper. The man is listening, but not looking at the woman, rather at his meal in front of him. A maid brings coffee cups on a platter.]

SHE (reading)—"At 5:15, the barrage was raised, and the Americans advanced to attack. The long line moved forward like the steady on-sweep of the tide—unwavering, irresistible, implacable." Oh, isn't it perfectly wonderful! I knew our men would fight gloriously! And just listen to this:

[Panel 2: The images of Washington and Lincoln have doubled in size and the eyes clearly glare at the man. The man now shows beads of sweat around his head and wears an expression of distress. The woman continues to read the paper. The maid departs the scene having delivered the coffee cups.]

SHE (reading)—"The Germans fought desperately but the American lines never wavered in their onward course. Sometimes the broad stretch of the battlefield was enveloped in great volumes of smoke, but a moment later, as the air cleared, the same lines were to be seen moving onward. At 6:45, the sound of cheering was heard amidst the din of the battle and a few moments later, the message was sent back that the American troops had captured the great German position."

[Panel 3: The images of Washington and Lincoln are now almost fully the size of the wall and marks of consternation and anger are clear on their brows as they glare at the man. The woman continues to read the paper without looking up. The man is fleeing the room in great haste with his arms in the air. He has knocked over his chair in his haste and has bumped into the maid who was returning with a coffee pot and biscuits. The man's face is obscured by raised hands and his overcoat, but he is clearly fleeing.]

SHE (reading)—"The American victory of yesterday may well mark the beginning of the end of the war. London and Paris are ringing with the praises of the American soldiers. President Wilson has proclaimed a national holiday in celebration of the triumph, and the American soldier has won imperishable glory as a fighting man."

[The last panel is signed] McCutcheon



Hymn for America



Air: "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled"

Where's the man, in all the earth— Man of want or man of worth— Who shall now to rank or birth Knee of homage bend? Though he war with chance or fate, If his heart be free of hate, If his soul with love be great, He shall be our friend.

Where's the man, of wealth or wage, Dare be traitor to his age, To the people's heritage Won by war and woe,— Counting but as private good All the gain of brotherhood By the base so long withstood? He shall be our foe.