Denver labor bulletin., 1917-11-10

coiled in wisp of knot, and her old
fashioned bodice was buttoned across
her flat chest Her bony hands trembled
as she oiled her typewriter, and her
knees poked out her skirts like the
ridge poles of a two-ring circus.
And all the Pretty Young Girls in
the big office and all the errand boys
and underclerks watched her as if she
had been a gray ape initiating the
pranks of trained young monkey.
As men speculate on the open market,
SO they wondered how she happened to
be wished on them. They all wondered
what pull brought this ancient dame
into equipped office where
the Pretty Young Girls wore the latest
sports clothes and the boys were in
the irreproachable garb of business
men.
The Pretty Old Girl knew she was
under a curtain of fire that scorched
her like lead from the guns. The car
riage slipped from her nervous fingers
and crashed on the machine. Half
dozen carbon sheets fell from her
sheaf of papers and the flying pages
were caught by a gust of wind and
scurried all over the room. She scram-
bled after them and took them soiled
and crumpled back to her desk. And
were hysterical with laughter and the
boys were exploding like fire crackers.
Alone the Pretty Old Girl faced the
problems of a modern machine. While
her dim eyes brimmed with tears that
burned like scalding steam, she ar
ranged her papers, pushed them INTO
the carriage and hesitatingly touched
the keys. Slowly and steadily she
gained in speed. Back and forth she
swung the handle bar and the keys
clicked like a telegraph instrument.
She bent eagerly to her work. She
was like a circus horse, long hitched
to a garbage wagon, who, suddenly
hears the blare of the bugle. Faster
and faster the hands, hardened and
wrinkIed with work, sped over the keys
like brown swallows flying to their
nests. The pile Of papers on the right
diminished and the basket on the left
was full to overflowing. She was all
,alone in the big room, for all the Pretty
Young Girls and the errand boys and
the underclerks were crowded in the
Presidents private office. Said he:
Pm ashamed of you! To think you
would let an older woman come into
this office and sting her with your
cruel thoughts To think young peo-
pie would let her dodge around the
[ room anu HlCh up HaftAo lANL4A NAiNNA
your feet She can buy and sell you in
experience. She knows how to spell
and she learned her pot hooks so thoro-
Is that neither time nor toll can efface
a fraction of the characters she used
in my office twenty-five years ago and
which she has never had occasion to
use since the day she left me to take up
the heaviest burden known to woman.
"She was always a plain, unpre-
tending girl, overburdened with other
peoples cares. She always took the
heavy end and lifted like an athlete.
| She is the most unselfish and loving
woman God ever made. And one day
when she was 40 and looked 60, her
preacher told her she ought not to live
alone in the bit of home she had
scratched together after she had given
and given to everyone who put out
their pink palms TO be crossed with
the gold she worked so hard to earn.
"He had the nerve to tell her she
ought to hunt up some friendless, pen
niless old woman and invite her to
come and live with her. And some
thing flared up in her gentle soul,
even as an extinct volcano sometimes
sends up puff of smoke and spits n
few stones to show that the subter-
ranean fires still burn.
"No old woman for me-" she cried.
Pm old enough for half dozen old
women and If | must have someone in
my house, I'll choose someone young in
soul and body. Someone to reJuvenate
and not to ossify Someone to drive
me out of the ruts and send me racing
thru the green meadows. I've stood
beside still waters" all my life and
now | crave a rushing, roaring torrent.
| want to feel the spray on my face
and be drenched TO the skin
"And so she adopted two baby boys
and went on a lonely ranch to raise
them. From what men tell me. they
never gave her minute to ossify. for
even in the cradle they were rebellious
and uncomfortable. Everything must
have been wrong with their forefath
ers and mothers, for they were the in
carnation of evil-cruel. lazy and un-
grateful. they lashed her patient spirit
for twenty years All alone she fought
the unequal battle of making men of
the miserable ours.
"And when her wonderful courage
almost failed, when her cup of bitter
ness almost overflowed, they suddenly
righted themselves like whirligigs
spent with action. On her they Law
| ished the richness of their love and
tenderness. They shifted her burdens
onto their strong young lives and then
she knew that their chastened souls
had been made all right.
"Then along came Uncle Sam asking
for young men who could be spared
and welcome. Not the men who had
wasted their manhood or whose bodies
were destroyed by disease. But the
young men-the men with sound
flesh, clean lives and high ideals. It's
going to cost $4,000 to put a man in
France, and, merely as a business in
vcstment, the men they send must be
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