The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-07-16

IF you love Pierre Lofts poetic story, II "Peacheur d'Islande" (An Iceland Fisherman as much as I do, then wished as have that you might journey to that tiny hamlet on the north coast of Brittany, France, where "forty-foot tides fling their spray against an old stone jetty," the scene of the adorable Loti story.
 If you recall, An Iceland Fisherman" is story filled with pathos and the ut most simplicity, telling of the love of Breton maid and a sailor boy, a fisher man in the tempestuous seas of Iceland
 The story describes their long visita- tion before grasping the flower of happi- ness by marriage, their brief and joyous marriage festival and then the sailor lover putting out to sea never to return!
 To my mind, An Iceland Fisherman" is one of the most intense and appealing stories that l have ever read, the fleet ingness of joy, the sadness of memorable fate, being woven, like the theme of A symphony throughout the tender TO- nance.
 have fancy, and I've just "conjured 1t up recently since I've read a book called Passed by the Censor" that the theme of An Iceland Fisherman might have been suggested to Loti by the strange moss grown wall at one end of the little graveyard of the Brittany ham
 let, which is called "The Wall of the Disappeared"
 This was suggested to my mind because in Passed by the Censor" Wythe Will
 Hams, the author, describes this wall so minutely; he writes of "a wall A dozen feet high and hundred years old, cov- cred with small slabs overhung and sone- times half hidden beneath clambering ivy"
 Upon these slabs" he writes, 'are
 recorded the names of the men of the village who have gone to sea and have
 never returned or been heard of again;
 the names of the ships are there; the
 dates of their sailing; some time the
 names of three generations of one family
 prayers of women."
 For hundred years these names and dates go back and here and there fresh ly Towering wreath bears testimony tha. the sea is still taking it's yearly toll of the lives of Breton sailors. Since the beginning of the ghastly world war, La Patrie,' as well as the sea, has demanded tHe liIe Ol the sea coast V1llaSer, TOT Mir. Williams, the author of Passed by the Censor" says he saw only a short time ago a Breton mother kneeling in prayer before a freshly painted memorial upon this moldering wall The date upon the slab was September, 1915, and the writer says:
 Instead of the name of a fishing boat that went to pieces off the coast of Ice land, was recorded the mans regiment, followed by his name and the words Disappeared in the battle of the Marne'!" Somehow this incident suggested to me another thought, namely, have we not all of us in our lives some wall of the disappeared" before which in silent, soli- tary hours we kneel in prayer and tears?
 No matter how busy or work a day our hours may be, is there not some 'me- ! morial place. in our heart of hearts where we gaze through tears at a bar | rier of silence that rises like cold gray
 stone between ourselves and some face and form beloved?"
 | Circumstances over which we have no
 control have caused so much joy and gladness to disappear; absence and mis-
 understa ndings borne away, as ships
 night bear them away, smiles that made sunshine, voices that were as music
 to our days; perhapswe watched the fish 1 ing boats bearing. our treasures, put out
 to sea" with gayest hopes and with nc | drought that the falling msts of distance into which they disappeared would never | lift again.
 Sometimes an angry word has severed