Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1913-05-21
THE CALL.
(By James Hopper

/. ed, and no one has been able to get a
: word of it from him since. At the
time he was much overwrought: in
fact, to an Anglo-SaXon, was some
what of sight Che has French blood
/, in him, and it's apt to crop out when
he least expects it,; but if ever saw
Truth manifested, it was in that chok-
ing, painting, sobbing utterance of the
man.
Delaroche was one of the thousand
pedagogues which the American gov
eminent sent to food these benight-
ed isles with the limelight of civiliza-
ton His post was Cabancalan. You
don't know Cabancalan, do you?
Southern part of Negroes, twenty
miles from the mouth of the Hog.
/ rode thorugh there Once-God, a
lonely, desolate place! A thousand
tumbledown nipa shacks, crumbling
church, musty mountains to the east,
not a white man within thirty miles,
and the natives themselves away be-
low the average-on the edge of
savagery.
Well, Delaroche stood it for six
months, then went daffy and sent for
the girl he loved in the states. And
she came the 10000 miles, and he
met her in Ilo-Ilo, and they were
tod nd
a paro to her new home-God!
And then, one night, some two
months after, she began to die. "She
began to die That's the way he
told it to me.
AS he came back from ride to one
of his barrio schools he found her
weeping with her face in her pillow.
She gently refused to tell him the rea-
son (poor little girl, he probably
would not have understoodD but la
ter she was saying small, incoherent
things, and then he knew she was in
fever. Then she began to groan
gently with each expiring breath, and
t great fear started to gnaw at his
heart.
, You don't understand. He told me
9 and l also probably did not under
stand. She was a gentle, soft crea-
ture, made all for love and sacrifice
and with something childish in her
S that drew the hearts of men in great
tenderness. He was a somewhat
gloomy fellow, with great asperities
Y in his character and a flaming will.
r He craved for sacrifice and she gave
e it all to him, and yet with her little
baby ways created in him the illusion
v that he was the protector.
And now, as he sat beneath the
oppression of the heated night, by
her side, with that continuous soft
little plant in his ears, he began to
see, he began to see-ah, many little
J, things that he should have seen, that
he had not seen, that-yes-that he
had refused to see.
{ When he would return from his
long barrio rides, after leaving her all
day face to face with the poignant
loneliness of her life, he was won't to
pick up a book and plunge into it for
S the evening. Several times he had
: seen tears come to her eyes as he did
this and then with laughing false sur
prise would ask her what was the
matter, at which she smiled and
shook her head gently.
There were many other things like
! that, but, he told me, this was the
picture which tortured him in end
less repetition that night. At inter-
walls he raised the mosquito-bar and
looked at her and spoke to her, a
great tenderness in his throat; but
she did not answer, merely lay her
head on her left arm and softly, with
each breath, came the little plant,
patient and submissive, and 1t tore
his heart. Then he sat down again
at his vigil with a great muffled fear
a-pound in his breast, and then again
he saw the picture. He came back
from his barrio ride, picked up a
book and read, and tears started in
her eyes.
That's how he passed the night. At
dawn a great longing to do some
thing took hold of him, and leaving
her he went out into the pueblo.
There was not physician within
fifty miles; it was the rainy season
and each mile was ten. Finally he
returned, and as he looked upon her
she gripped his arm. Don't, don't"
she said, and he burst into tears.
She had felt his absence.
Then people, the poor lowly folk
of the village, began to troop in
with plying EXPLANATIONS and rude,
naive gifts. Among them were two
little girls who stood awed at the
door. He remembered them. When