Chapter IV (5)

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, 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 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--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 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.

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 Élysées.

"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.