New-York tribune., 1918-05-26

Gull chant of tireless native labor
With this latter Raoul's Western phy-
sique could not compete. Seriously
hurt by the strain of cargo shifting. he
was carried to the hospital at .Algiera
where he recuperared slowly and, half
IN payment for the kindnesses of new
friends and half for sheer inability to
be entirely idle, he worked as hosnital
orderly while he regained his strength.
From Algiers
To Wallingford
Meanwhile his father, for some ren-
son known only to himself. gathered
up his growing family and conducted
them overseas to the little town of
WalAngtord, Conn. Here they lived
IN simple poverty. Himself a man of
many trades, Edward Lufbery estab-
lished a bakery at Wallingford, in
which his two sons, Charles and Rene.
worked with him off and on. The bak-
cry thrlved while and then he gave it
up. Three of his daughters became
trained nurses. The fourth, Berthe.
who presented such difficulties in the
first years of her life, has grown to
great beauty and is married now in
Wallingford, at seventeen, and with
her and her young husband Lufbery
pere lives in meagre simplicity.
From Algiers, twelve years ago, the
wandering Raoul descended upon Wal
lingford unannounced. His father had
just sailed for Antwerp. Thus they
missed each other and never met again.
Here Wallingfords memories begin.
Here began perhaps the drabest period
OF the colorful life witch the world
associates with the career of Lufberv
No one understands, neither Walling-
ford nor his family, why Raoul settled
down to factory work for nearly three
dull years. He made casket fittings.
silver casket fittings.
His father shakes his head.
"Casket fittings" he observes. un-
comprehendingly. "Raoul was strange
boy. Often in the last few davs T
have said that no one knew him, ever.
until now. He hated shop work. He
hated towns and cities and regular
hours and smoke and all that. We've
never understood him at all, I think.
until, perhaps, now" His father looks
away over the warm green hills. and in
his lined old face Is the reflection of
his boys glory, the CLEAN of q new
understanding of that strange spirit
whose swift, sudden success his own
youth might have known,
1t Was to the Sky
He Belonged
He was strange boy" he resumes
abruptly. "It is the war! It was the
war that he waited for, that he wan
dered all over the earth to find! He
walked on the ground and lived and
worked on the ground, and all the time
1T was in the sky that he belonged!
The war has been mother, sweetheart
and wife to him"-- Lufbery pere
pauses here. He darts a slightly sus-
piclous glance from side to side as
though he had been surprised into too
great condolences.
Sweetheart Or wife? Lufbery's fam
lily have nothing to say except that
they have never heard of a woman.
When the news of his death reached
his father it was through a press dis
patch, and while he waited for the Of
ficlal notification which has not come
he became nearly certain that there
must be wife in France of whom
Raoul never wrote and that it was she
who was notified as "next of kin" This
is possible, but improbable, since Major
Lufbery joined the service of the
United States but recently, and the de-
tails of his official record are doubt
less still in France and not on the files
of the War Department in Washing
ton. Yet there may be a wife. 1t
would almost seem that such a roman
tic possibility appeals to Lufbcry pere.
AS he says, Raoul had known and been
known by many great people since his
we'll won fame-and he might have
married any one, any one! And assur-
edly he would not have written home
about it if he had, for he never wrote