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Show titiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiimiii 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 j 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 k 1 1 1 1 1 m i ; 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 : k 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 : i . 1 1 1 j 1 1 1 1 1 u Ramsey MilhoIIand I By BOOTH TARKINGTON f E Copyright by Doublodny. Pafie S- Compnny iimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiimiiiiimiiiiiiimiiiiiiimiii iiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiii::iiiiimiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin CHAPTER XVI. 18 Thnt thunder In the soil, nt first too d-cp within It to ho audible, had come to the surface now nnd gradually became be-came heard na the thunder of a million feet upon the training grounds. The bugles rung shurper; the drums nnd f.fes of town and village, and countryside country-side were the drums and fifes of a war that came closer nnd closer to every hearth between the two oceans. All the eld symbols becume symbols bright and new, as If no one had ever seen them before. "America" was like n new word, and the song "America" wns like a new song. All the dusty blatnncles of orating cnndldntes, seeking seek-ing to rouse bored nudltors with "the old flag"; all the mechanical patrlotlcs of school and church nnd club ; all these time-worn, flaccid things leaped suddenly Into living color. The Hng heenme brilliant and strange to see strange with a meaning thnt seemed new. a meaning long known, yet never known tfll now. And so hearts thnt thought they knew themselves came upon ambushes of emotion and hidden Indwellings of spirit not guessed before. Dora Yo-cum, Yo-cum, listening to the "Star-Spangled Ennner," sung by children of Immigrants Immi-grants to an out-of-tune old plnno In a mission clubroom, In Chicago, found herseJt crying with a soul-shaking heartiness In a way different from other oth-er ways that she had cried. Among the many things she thought of then was this: That the banner the chil dren were singing about was In danger. dan-ger. The great country, nlmost a continent, con-tinent, had always seemed so untouchable, untouch-able, so safe and sure; she had never been able to conceive of a hostile power mighty enough to shake or even Jar It. And since so great nnd fundamental funda-mental a thing could not be injured, a war for Its defense had appeared to be. In her eyes, not only wicked but ridiculous. At last, less and less vaguely, she had come to comprehend something of the colossal German threat, and the shadow that touched this bright banner of which the immigrants' immi-grants' children piped so briskly in the mission clubroom. She began to understand, though she could not have told just why. or how, or nt what moment understanding understand-ing reached her. She began to understand under-stand that her country, threatened to the life, had flung Its line those thousands thou-sands of miles across the sea to stand and hold Hindenburg and Ludendorff nj all their kaisers, kings, dukes and crown princes, their Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their monstrous mons-trous other engines of men made into armies. Through the long haze of misted sea-miles and the smoke of land-miles she perceived that brown line of ours, and knew it stood there that Freedom, and the Nation Itself, might not perish from the earth. And so, a week later, she went home and came nervously to Ramsey's mother moth-er and found how to direct the letter she wanted to write. He was In France As the old phrase went, she poured out her heart. It seems to apply to her letter. She wrote: "Don't misunderstand me. 1 felt that my bitter speech to you hnd driven you to take the step you did. I felt that I had sent you to he killed, and that I ought to be killed for doing It. but I knew that you had other motives, loo. 1 knew, of course, that you thought of the country more than you did of me. or of any mad thing I could say lint I thought that what I said might have been the prompting thing, the word that threw you Into it so hastily and before you were ready, perhaps. I dreaded to bear that terrible responsibility. responsi-bility. I hope you understand. "My great mistake has been I thought I was so 'logical' it's been In my starting everything with a thought I'd never proven: that war Is the worst thing, and nil other evils were lesser. I was wrong. I was wrong, because war Isn't the worst evil. Slavery Is a worse evil, and now I want to tell you I have come to see that you are making war on those that make slavery. Yes. you are fighting those that make both war and slavery, and you are right, nnd I humbly reverence rev-erence nnd honor all of you who nre In this right war. I have come home to work In the Ited Cross here ; I work-there work-there all day, and all day I keep saying say-ing to myself but I really mean to you it's what I pray, and oh, how I pray It : 'God be with you and grant you the victory !' For you must win and you will win. "Forgive me, oh, please and If you will, could you write to me? I know you have things to do more important than 'girls' but oh, couldn't you, please 7" This letter, which she had taken en re not to dampen, ns she wrote, went in slow course to the "Americnn Expeditionary Ex-peditionary Forces In Fiance," and finally found him whom It patiently Bought. He delayed not long to answer, and In time she held In a shaking bund the penciled missive he had sent her: "You forget all that comic talk about me enlisting because of your telling me to. I'd written my fa: her I was going at the first chance a month and a ha f before ti nt day when you said It My mind was made up the first time there was nny talk of wnr. nnd you hnd about ns much responsibility for my going ns some little sparrow or something. Of course I don't mean I didn't pay any attention to the different differ-ent things you said, because I always did, nnd I used to worry over It because be-cause I was afraid some day It would get you Into (rouble, jnd I'm mighty glad you've cut it out. That's right: you he a regular girl now. You always were one, nnd I knew that ull right. I'm not ns senred to write to you ns I was to talk to you, so I guess you know I was mighty tickled to get your letter. It sounded blue, but I was glad to get It. You bet I'll write to you! I don't suppose you could huve nny Idea how glad I wns to get your letter. I could sit here nnd write to you all day if they'd let me. hut I'm a corporal now. When you answer this, I wish you'd say how the old town looks nnd If the grass In the front yards Is ns green as It usually Is, nnd everything. And tell me some more about everything you think of when you are working down nt the Red Cross like you said. I guess I've read your letter five million times, and that part ten million. I mean where you underlined that 'you' nnd what you said to yourself at the Ited Cross. Oh, murder, but I was glad to read that ! Don't forget about writing nnyth'ng else you think of like that. "Well, I wns interrupted then and this is the next day. Of course 1 can't tell you where we are, because that darned censor will read this letter, but JSSiS av n-filtr-- They Were Soldiers. I guess he will let this much by. Who do you think I ran across in a village yesterday? Two boys from the old school days, and we certainly did shake hands a few times! It was that old foolish Dutch Kruseraeyer nnd Albert Al-bert Paxton, both of them lieufenants. I heard Fred Mitchell is still training in the States and about crazy because they won't send him over yet. "If you have any idea how glad I was to get your letter, you wouldn't lose any time answering this one. Anyhow. Any-how. I'm going to write to you again every few days If I get the chance, because be-cause maybe you'll answer more than one of 'em. "But see here, cut out that 'sent you to be killed' stuff. You've got the wrong idea altogether. We've got the big Job of our lives, we know that, hut we're going to do it. There'll be mistakes mis-takes and bad times, but we won't fall down. Now, you'll excuse me for saying say-ing It this way. Dora, but I don't know just how to express myself except snying of course we know everybody Isn't going to get back home but listen, lis-ten, we didn't come over here to get killed particularly, we came over to give these Dutchmen h 1 ! "i'erhaps you can excuse Innguage if I write it with a blank like that, hut before we get back w're going to d.i what we came for. They may not all of them lie as bad as some of thein it's a good thing you don't know what we do. be .itise some of It would make you sick. As I sny, there may be quite , a lot of good ones among them; but we know what they've done to this country, and we know what they mean to do to ours. So we're going to attend at-tend to thein. Of course that's why I'm here. It wasn't you. "Don't forget to write pretty soon. Dorn. You say In your letter I certainly cer-tainly wns glad to get that letter-well, letter-well, you say I have things to do more Important than 'girls.' Dora, I think you probably know without my saying so that of course while I have got Important Im-portant things to do, just as every man over here has, and everybody nt home, for that matter, well, the thing that Is most Important In the world to nio, next to helping win this war, It's rending the next letter from you. "Don't forgot how glad I'll be to get it. and don't forget you didn't have anything to do with my being over here. Thut was It was something else. And you bet, whatever happens I'm glad I came ! Don't ever forget that !" Dora knew It was "something else." Her memory went hack to her first recollection rec-ollection of him In school: from that time on he hud been Just an ordinary, everydny boy, II L'tiderlng somehow through his lessons In school and through his sweetheartlng with Millu, as the millions of other boys floundered floun-dered along with their own lessons nnd their own Mlllns. She saw him swinging his books and romping homeward home-ward from the schoolhouse, or going whistling by her father's front yard, rattling a stick on the fence ns he went, care-free nnd masterful, but shy ns a deer If strnllL'ers looked nf him and always "not much of a talker." She had always felt so superior to him; she shuddered as she thought of it. His quiet had been so much better than her talk. His Intelligence was proven now, when It enme to the great test, to be of a stronger sort than hers. He was wise and good nnd gentle and a fighting man 1 "We know what they've done to this country and what they mean to do to ours. So we're going to attend to them." She read this over, and she knew thnt Ramsey, wise and gentle and good, would fight like an unchained devil, and that he and his comrades would Indeed and Indeed do what they "came for." "It wasn't you," he said. She nodded nod-ded gently, agreeing, and knew what it was that sent him. Yet Ramsey had his own secret here, and did not tell it. Sometimes there rose, faint in his memory, a whimsical picture, yet one that had always meant much to him. He would see an old man sitting with a little boy upon a rustic bench under a walnut tree to watch the "Decoration "Dec-oration Day Parade" go by and Ramsey Ram-sey would see a shoot of sunshine thnt had somehow got through the walnut tree and make a bedazzlement of glinting fine lines over a spot about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's thick white hair. And In Ramsey's Ram-sey's memory, the little boy. sitting beside the veteran, would half close his eyes, drowsily, playing that this sunshine spot was a white hlrd's-nest, until he had a momentary dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue soldier cap on Its head. And Ramsey would bring out of his memory thoughts thnt the old man had got Into the child's head that day. "We knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man had to win, in t lie long run. . . . We were on the side of God's Plan. . . . Long ago we began to see hints of Ills Plan. . . . Man has to win. his freedom from himself men in the light have to fight against men in the dark . . . That light is the unswer . . . We had the light that made us never doubt." A long while Dora sat with the letter let-ter In her hand before she answered It and took It upon her heart to wear. That was the place tw it. sinee it was already within her heart, where he would find it when he came Inane again. And she beheld the revelation sent to her. This ordinary life of Ramsey's Ram-sey's Was but the outwurd glinting of a high and splendid spirit, as high and splendid as earth can show. And yet It was only the life of an everyday American boy. The streets of the town were full, now, of boys like Ramsey. Ram-sey. At first they were Just hoys In uniform uni-form ; then one saw that they were hoys no more. They were soldiers. THE END. |