Show the old settler my y dear san Jua ners the old man was bending over a war map very intent on the region of the east indies and the philippine islands I 1 detected a glint of strong feeling in his gray ey eye e and lines of marked resola in his wrinkled face his brow knitted and somehow he be became beame c the personification of very deep feeling and I 1 had a keen desire to know what was going on in his mind he looked studiously at the blue area representing the great stretch of the Paci pacific and seemed to be following the sea lanes and the land highways to utah and the war industry plant where he was one of the workers for a while he seemed to forget me and that we had bad been talking together on subjects but lie he roused from his reverie and looked up with an apologetic expression you see he began to explain my wife and I 1 just got a telegram gr am from the war department telling us that we could consider ourson ourson dead he looked at the map again it became a sacred interval through which my eagerness to know more must wait patiently or it would tread on sacred ground the boy was in bataan when we last heard definitely from h him in more than a year ago the old man went on his mother and I 1 have been waiting and hoping anxiously all these months and now they tell us there is no hing on which to hang our hopes that he still survives I 1 still try to tell myself that he is hiding somewhere there with the natives in the jungle but I 1 dont know I 1 do know it is the best of causes in in which a man can die from my childhood I 1 had of the gallant men who fought at bunker hill and w wished dished that I 1 might see them now it occurred to me that I 1 was looking at the very kind of stuff that waited on bunker hill till they saw the white of the eyes the kind of mettle that endures the terrible winter at valley forge the kind of le ie solute manhood that made the famous answer millions for defense but not ct one e cent for tribute it came to me that the fight wh which ch began at bunker hill was still the big fight of free men that an ideal as splendid as that which was conceived in the minds of the patriot fathers in 1776 is something which no people can enjoy but as they have the courage to defend it and that the great declaration of american independence is something which must ever burn in the hearts of true men and for which they must stand ready to place thear all on the altar of freedom ALBERT R LYMAN |