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Show BUCK WHEAT BLOOM (( "Kl EVER'LL fight a worse batttle l than that!' exclaimed a khaki clad boy, flinging himself down beside me on the car seat. I thought I understood, for I had witnessed the boy's parting from his folks at the station of the village of C , Iowa. His people, very evidently farmer folk a man, two women and a couple of half-grown girls hung on him until he had to run for the moving train. The women were weeping. One clung to the boy as if she could never let him go. "That," I thought, "is his mother; the man with the set jaw is his father." Yes, I thought I understood. under-stood. "Saying good-bye is pretty tough," I ventured. "Yes," the boy replied, "It's been tough the whole furlough Where you from? Chicago? I had a job as shipping ship-ping c lerk in Chicago when I enlisted . . . went right to camp from there . . . they say we're going across ... I got ten days to see the folks. Been times I wish I hadn't come. It's been hard for all of us, except mother. She kept feeding and feeding me up and jollying jolly-ing me about how I was going to see the world, and she wouldn't let any of them say a word against my going. I don't mean they wanted to only, you know . . . they couldn't hide it. And then, this morning, when I started, we couldn't find mother anywhere. I wish but I had to make this train." "I thought the lady at the station was your mother," I said, "the older one." "No, that's my oldest sister; she part raised me." Ho leaned towards the window, pointed: "That's our house over there in the trees," ho said. 'Our farm runs runs down to the track about here Why, Mother! Mother!" The boy lurched across me, his body half out of the open window. Under his arm, I caught a glimpse of a small bareheaded woman standing in a field of blooming buckwheat. She was waving wav-ing a white sunbonnet. It was only a glimpse; the train rolled on. Presently Present-ly the boy sank back into his seat again. I thought I understood his silence. si-lence. Yes, I thought I understood. Later, for we traveled some distance dis-tance together, the soldier told me that his name was Ray Ellis. I entered enter-ed the name in my note book and that night, in a Cedar Rapids hotel, I jotted down what I have written here the little mother bidding her boy goodbye, good-bye, alone, from a distance, had beguiled be-guiled my Interest. . . The date of that notation was August 10, 1917 . . . This morning I read in the oversea casualty list the name of Private Ray Ellis, C , Iowa. The buckwheat is blooming again M under August skies; an orchestra of a thousand bees makes the air all music. Somehow, somehow, I am sure that Ray Ellis closed his eyes to that muBlc. Somehow I believe that his M last waving banner was a white sun- M bonot. By Harry B. Kennon in Town Talk. H |