Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1917-10-31

YOU study her features YOU will glimpse now
and then a smile that is almost beautiful
in its tender patience, for she has been
into the great furnace Of human sacrifice.
out of which we emerge either whitened or
blaCkened
Perhlps as the hum Of the young voices
is stilled after the days work she fingers
at her desk, and I can fancy that at times
her brown hair is buried I'm her arms, and
IL you could lift her head you would see
tears in her wistful eyes. For the young
teacher is fighting her own problems and
doing her best to smile out into the world
as she visions certain wlr-paintcd pic
ture somewhere on the French frontier.
1t is such a picture as has grown all
too common in the last three years Of this
mad blood-lust-a shrapnel-swept field,
rows on rows Of tense-faced men, huddled
in tho trench line, the sudden battery charge
over the top" the red rain of death in
No Mans Land. Men in muddy uniforms
are dropping like tenpins.
one Of these is young American, and
she knows that IN an inside pocket they
found the soied photograph Of q girl with
a brown splotch on a lower corner. She
has the photograph now, for the French
have a wonderful nicely in matters of sem
timent. even in wartimes and the picture
was duly mailed to the address written
on its back. Dora Reynolds seldom eX-
hbits the photograph even 10 her friends,
for the brown splotch on its corner came
from lne gushing llle Dloou OF lle Hldl she
loved, and is all that Is left to her Of the
happiness Of which she had dreamed.
This is only chaper in the tragedy Of
her love story.
She had been engaged for two years TO
be married to Charlie Warren, one of the
od-home boys, who had gone away from
the little town TO indianapolis, where his
ability as a construction engineer was al
ready beginning to win him a substantial
success. But she felt she could not accede
| to his request for an immediate marriage.
| Her father had died when she was a child,
| leaving virtually nothing, and the death
| of her mother, three years before, had left
| her with the care of an invalid. crippled
sister whom she supported with her meager
! earnings as a school teacher. Charlie had
| offered to take her place IN the support
| of her sister, but Dora maintained there
| could be no deep marital love that handi-
| capped the husband with "A wlfe's obliga-
| tons. and she had refused.
Manlike, Charlie resented. rather than
| try to understand and overcome her
| scruples. and, month after his last visit
home, he had written her that he had
! taken advantage Of an opportunity to en-
| list in the engineering corps of the French
| army. This was a year and half before
the entrance Of this country into the war
| For the first time the real meaning OF
! the trenches now stabbed home TO the girl
| Less than two weeks after Charlie had
| sailed from New York Doras invalid sis
| ter died suddenly, and the only obstacle
| to their marriage was removed-too late,
She had three letters from him, one after
| his receipt of her news, full Of sympathy
! for her, and with a strange new note Of
| tenderness that she had never seen in him
| before for Charlie was already beginning
| 10 catch something of that greater vision
| of life which comes TO men who go down
into the jaws of daily death,
I'll, Iar la p~A
| in the village postofice when she had been
| handed the little package, with the strange
stamps, and marked over with the red-inked
| o. X. OF the censor
The first awful blow has now been some.
| what dulled, and Dora, too. IS beginning to
understand something of that new vision
| of life, which came TO Charlie in his brief
space in the trenches. At first she had
blamed him bitterly, and then she had
blamed herself for their separation. Now
she knows that both were TO blame
She knows. too, that life is not an op-
| portunity hut a gift--the greatest which
| God has given men and women, and that
| in the giving II always returns TO the donor
| more than is received. 1t was she who
denied Charlie the privilege of that gift
/ and herself its blessings Tho very fact
| Of her invalid sister would have helped ce.
ment rather than lessen the tie between
them, II their love was genuine and last
ing 1t was not independence which kept
her from realizing her happiness. It was
pride--and It was pride which kept Charlie
from attempting TO remove the barriers
which ,she interposed between them and
which sent him 10 his death
Both have paid the penalty a result
Dora was always a sweet girl. She is now
| a transfgured woman. In my last letter
from her she tells me that she had applied
for a position as Red Cross nurse and
maybe by the time this is written, she, too
will be somewhere i'm France" realizing
the vision of that greater love, whose rea
meaning she began to glimpse in the LITTLE
Indiana school house-after It was too late
Copyright 1917. by the Bell Syndicate. Inc.)
FridnS-Whst arc the women going 60 do?