The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-07-21
Dorothy DiI Says
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer


A Volunteer.
The village prodigal was one OF the
first to answer his country's call for
men to defend it, and to enlist to go
off and fight somewhere in France"
Whereat those who knew him mar
veled.
He had never been of any account.
YOU know. He had idled and loafed
while others toiled. He had sung and
drunk and danced while other strove.
He had lived a parasite on, his poor
old mother. who took, in boarders to
support him. So when he went off
to the war, people said it would be no
loss to any one If he never came back.
The volunteers went off in a little
blaze of glory. With fluttering of
flags. and blare of bands, but when
the last echo of the tumult and the
shouting had died, an old, gray headed
woman sat alone in darkened room,
with bowed head and desolate face,
trying to pierce with her imagination
the future into which the black sheep
had gone.
She knew very well what his world
said of her bow. She knew his faults
as no other could know them. She
knew him to be lazy shiftless, selfish.
dissolute. There was no fiber of her
heart that he had not wrung with
anguish time and time again.
She had suffered the death-in-life
Of the mother who sees all of he- am
billions and plans for her son slain by
lis own worthlessness. She lad been
scorched by the shame that burns up
a woman's soul when she realizes that
her man is a weakling who can never
hold up his head in q world of men.
For weary years she had never
heard sudden football on her door
step, or the call of an unexpected
voice, without turning sick and faint
nf
iamity he had brought upon her. She
knew so well, she had heard so often.
that sound most dreadful of all that
ever comes into a woman's life-the
shutting. heavy tread of the feet
bringing home a drunk-sodden boy to
his mother.
Yet he was the only son of his
mother, and she was a widow.
She never thought of him without
going thru a purgatory of self re-
proach, or feeling that she WAS re-
sponsible for his wasted life. She had
not been firm with him when he was
a child, as she should have been. She
had not controlled him as boy, as
she should have done. In all his life
she had never punished him for a
fault, or denied him anything that it
was in her power to give him. How
could she, when he looked at her with
his dead fathers eyes, and impor-
tuned her in the voice that had
wheedled the heart out of her
bosom? And he was all that she hal
in the world.
AS the volunteers marched away
other women had chung weeping to
their sons. She alone had been dry
eyed. She alone was glad to see her
boy go. 1t seemed to her that God
was giving him another chance to be-
come man instead of black sheep
"a chance that her weakness and
tenderness denied him.
In the army there would he fnfiuita
strength to back his supine flabbiness.
There would be the iron curb of au-
thority to control his wanton will
There would be the very robe anil
crown of visible glory before eyes that
mad seen nothing worth striving for
She knew that no man could go into
the baptism of battle and come out
the same. He must needs be worse or
better Tor that crucial experience, and
so, in her darkened room, the prodi
gals mother knelt and prayed for all
prodigals who had offered I'D their
poor. purposeless lives for one great
ideal OF righteousness.
When the end came 1t seemed TO h m
that she had known from the first
that 1t must happen and that she had
been waiting for it all of the time.
AT first 1t was only a name in the list
of the missing. Then a letter came
from comrade telling of a splendid
piece or heroism. There was a cali for
men to do a desperate deed Of daring
ana the prodfgal was the first to vol
unteer
IF should be killed" he said.
using almost the very words Others
mad used in speaking of him, sYf 7
should be killed it will be no loss to
any one-not even to my mother"
And SO he went, and he did not
come back. But the one act of a min
ute atoned for the failure of a life
time.
They call him hero now In the LITTLE
village and are going to build a rnonuS
ment TO his memory blazoned with
the story of his great moment and ~
his glory. And they feel that hi.
mother should not grieve tor him ana
should feel that it was best thar ba
passed as he did. II he had lived -
would never have amounted to any.
thing, they say, and when the war /.
ended most likely he wonlc have he
come again just the village fdIer ma
black sheep.
Perhaps the woman knows tbs,
too. but he was the only son of ii,
mother-and she was a widow.
AN -.