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Show THOUGHTS ON MEMORIAL DA! DECORATION day, day of flags, and flowers, and green, grass-covered grass-covered graves. Decoration day, the time of sobs and tears, of prayers, and memories, and smiles. Decoration day! It comes only once a year, this brave holiday, on the boundary line between May and June, spring and summertime. summer-time. Schools give a holiday and banks close. Business is shut up, and ' the tired workingman hangs a Sag out over his porch, and rests. Old soldiers, tottering on canes, soldiers bent and white-headed, waiting for the last "taps" to be sounded, get out their suits of blue and gray, covered with tarnished gold lace and brass buttons, and hobble to the cemetery to lay a wreath on some comrade's last resting piace. It is a beautiful thing to think of a nation celebrating a day setting it apart from All others for the purpose pur-pose of honoring the nation's heroes. I was sitting in a trolley car when a lady entered a woman no longer very young, with a pale, sorrowful face. She wore expensive black, and her two carefully gloved hands held a huge dewy mass of roses. Like an oasis in a desert they filled the dusty city air with sweetness and color. In a little while a small newsboy dragged himself up the step and presented a grimy transfer to the conductor. "I found it," he confided loudly to a man seated near the door. Then he tramped down the aisle, and climbed up on the seat next to the lady. "Them flow'rs are swell," he told her in a soft, wondering tone of voice. "I never saw any like 'em before." Reverently Rev-erently he touched the nearest blossom blos-som with moist, grimy fingers. The lady moved down on the seat, putting several feet, of space between herself and the small intruder. "Don't touch them!" she ordered crossly. Several blocks farther on she got out, her arms full of her fragrant burden. bur-den. With halting foosteps and tear-filled tear-filled eyes, she turned in at a great marble-columned cemetery gate. She was taking her roses to lay on the grave of some loved dead one. I was sorry for the woman; but I could not help thinking of the little newsboy. He was very much alive, and a single flower would have meant paradise to him. I know a girl who had a very dear friend a friend who meant more to her than I could possibly put into words. One day, the friend died and left her plunged in grief. A year after, the dead girl's birthday came around, and the day before the anniversary I happened to meet my friend on the street. We went to tea together. I did not speak to the absent one, but suddenly, as we sat quietly gazing out of the window, the girl began to talk. "Margaret," she s.iid, "something has been bothering me. I want to ask you if I'm doing right." "Perhaps I won't help any. I'm not so good at advice but go on." "You see, it's this way," she told me. "Tomorrow is Alice's birthday the first birthday when we haven't been together for ten years. I had earned five dollars it seemed more personal that way and I wan going to buy flowers for her grave. I was just on my way to the florist to order them when I met a woman I know a woman wom-an who used to wash for us. Margaret, Mar-garet, you should have seen her. Her eyes were large and black and her cheeks were perfectly hollow. I askefl her what was the matter, and she said she was hungry. Hungry? She was starving! And so were the three children chil-dren that belonged to her! Well, I told her that I would find some work for her today, and then I gave her all the money I had. It was only after she had left me that I remembered Alice's flowers I can't get them now. Do you think that she'll mind very much?" "Mind?" I groped blindly for words. "Mind? Of course not! She would be glad and thankful if she only knew." Do you think so too, friends of mine? One day this week I felt rather blue and unhappy. It was u dark, gloomy day, with a biting wind coming around the bleak corners and a heavy rain that fell drenchingly to the ground a steady downpour of big splashing drops. Somehow the world inside my office seemed very lonely and gray. I had a headache, my work had been going badly and I was rather discouraged. discour-aged. When the mail came in a big package of letters to be opened I was not much cheered. But my special guardian angel was on duty that day. When I cut the first envelope, I found it plain little letter, written In pencil on cheap paper, by an unknown lady, old enough to be my grandmother. But the words, lightly written in an old-fashioned hand, fell acroas my heart like a ray of golden sunshine, through the grayness of the rain. "Dear Friend," read the letter, "I have been seeing your pieces in tho Christian Herald for some time, and I made up my mind to write to you. Some people believe in keeping their kind words and their flowers and thei: love until a porson is dead. Hut 1 don't. I want you to know, right now, that you've cheered ma up lots of Limes, and that I like your stories and that I like you." Now, I don't want you to think that I am disapproving of Decoration day. The world is stupid enough and matter-of-fact enough to forget easily the heroes who lie in our cemeteries. But we should consider the living, too. Let us place roses over the little green mounds, but don't let us overlook the pleadiug child-hands that are stretched out for their 'sweetness. While we honor the memory of those beautiful spirits that have passed from us, let us not forget the living, breathing souls that need our help. It is not necessary to save all the flowers, the kind words and the kisses until lips and hearts and minds are cold and dead. Margaret E. Sangster, Jr., in the Christian Herald. |