Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-07-27 | Page 7 | Tale of Draft Told by Slat Lake Man

"TALE OF DRAFT TOLD II SALTIM MAN City Recorder Snow Has Interestin g Article in August Atlantic. T!i August issue of the Atlantic Monthly, just out, carries an article, "Reflections "Re-flections of a Draft-Board Man," from the pen of Gordon Snow, city recorder, clerk of the third draft board and former newspaper man, one time a member of The Tribune reportorial staff. Pome 6c00 words in length, the article is half narrative, half exposition. Athrob with human interest, it is a series of cross sections taken from the graphic moment of the writer's experiences as clerk of the third draft board; moments of seeing the lipht of courage shining from tear-filled eyes of women and the dawning light of battle in the dry eyes of men who have iixcel their gaze "over Follows one of the characteristic incidents inci-dents with which Mr. Snow portrays the daily tperiences of draft-board men. r -narratives of the article are hu-ous, hu-ous, pathetic, soul-stirring or heart- trenching recountings of such things as f inspired the classic poetry of the world All are actual occurrences. This story" is particularly appealing. Copied exactly from the columns of the Atlantic Monthly, it reads: pictures of the draft crowd my memory, many of them too fine and intimate to betray in print, some of them laughable, but most of the jump-in-the-throat variety. One I will not forego, for the paint is hardly hard-ly drv on it and I feel the keen stir of It'now as I write. Jt concerned the going to war of Joe Lewis. A frail little chap he was, so young and boyish for all his one-and-tweiity years. There was that about him which spoke of knickerbockers knicker-bockers and romping childhood laid aside but yesterday. I did not know Joe. He had passed through the mill of the draft as one of many; but we met for a brief sixty seconds one fine spring night at the station, just as the train was taking him away; and while memory lives, I shall remember re-member Joe. He looked down at me from a car window, and as he said good -by there was a twinkle in his eye as if he was amused that I did not know him. "Say good-by to Mary Jane for me," he called as the train moved out. "Who are you?" I cried, sprinting alongside the moving car. "Ha!" he laughed, "I'm the grocer's gro-cer's boy. Every day I came to your back door. Mary Jane knows me and so does the missus. Say good-by to both of them for me." The train clicked away into the night. I turned back, swallowing a lump. It so befalls that the light of .my household is a little 2-year-old, ana her name is Mary Jane. 0 little girl, playing there with your blocks, will you remember Joe, the grocer's boy little Joe, grown bo suddenly to brave manhood and gone away to fight for you, Mary Jane gone away to make and keep the world a fair and lovely place for i little children to be born in? Tou must, i Your little heart must find a niche for Joe to live in, though he ; "carry on" beyond the stars, and come never again to our back door. I Wj0 I their master, words would biia monument to Joe and his I For do they not, in a sense, I 'typify the times? Careless youngsters, young-sters, caught upon the great tide! Glorious youth, knowing no call so high that it cannot answer?