Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-04-18
Yvonne Dupouy, Visited at
Her Home by Journal Cor
respondent, PrayS for Little
Americans, Her. Good
F fairies"
BY WARD GREENE

(The Journals Staff Corresp ondent)
and please, father. if it isn't too
much trouble, will you go to see God
and Our Lady and ask them to be
awfully good to the little Americans
who have been SO, good to your own
little Yvonne."
Now do not know positively that
that is what YVOnne Dupouy said as
s she knelt at the knee of her good
old grandmother in the little room
of the little white house with the
pink roof in the town of BaZac DIZZY
met, in the province of Dordagne,
France; but if it wasn't that, it was
something very like it, and Bill
Matthews, whose French is much
better than the writer's, swore for
a fact that it was.
Certain it is that it was for the
little Americans Yvonne prayed, and
certain it is that her plea was made
not to God Himself, but to her own
father, her father who is in heaven
father who laid down his life for
France in the second spring of the
war. 1t is to him and not God Him
self that Yvonne prays now. One is
never sure of God, somehow, He is so
far away and must be so very busy.
But ones own father-of him one is
always sure.
We had come a long ways that
day in March to see Yvonne Du-
puoy and her old grandmother. From
America was received a letter. Ger
tain children of the south, it said,
readers of The Semi Weekly Journal,
had given their pennies and their
dimes that life might be made cas-
Ter for a little French girl who had
no father and no mother to guard
her through the years. She lived at
BaZac d'Eymet, sSid the letter, and
II -ir-SA L. i ~ all
was we'll?
If you were calling on Yvonne Du
puoy today, you would travel as we
did-on long train that left Par
is on a night so cold and rainy that
the chill pierced to the marrow, but
rushed on the next morning into a
land of sunshine and blue skies and
apple trees powdering the country
side with their white blossoms, south
ern France, where it is always warm
and green.
At Bordeaux we changed cars, Bor-
deaux, a port of ports, where the
great steamers moored at the quays
fly flags of all the world and the
streets along the water front echo to
the chatter and tWang of many
tongues. Yvonne we learned later,
has never been to Bordeaux, though
her home is not SO many miles away.
But some day she intends to, for she
And SO we came to BaZac dEymet
and the little white house with the
pink roof by the side of a long white
road. There were trees on either
side Of the road, tall, stately trees
in regular rows like soldiers. All
around were furrowed fields that
stretched away to the far horizon
and the blue sky in regular checker
board plots. They were track farms
and one of them belongs to Yvonne's
grandmother.
In America you would call her a
farmerette, wouldn't you? She would
be talked about and her picture would
be in all the papers. But it is not
so in France, where for near five
years now none but women and very
old men have titled the land. So has
Yvonne's grandmother titled, toiling
from dawn to sunset that her little
girl may never lack for potatoes and
Brussels sprouts and little peas and
the rich goats milk that brings the
| bloom to chubby cheeks.
Ev9nne's grandmother is very old.
Her brother. who is dead now. was
armies. She is almost as proud Of
him as is Yvonne of Papa Marcel
who was killed April %, 1915, at
Brocourt, on the Mouse.
She is not very pretty, Yvonne's
wrinkled face her lace kerchief, her
blouse, her full short skirt, her
| stockings and her sabots-they are
all they should be, though much
worn. Even her pipe she smokes
neatly. And so Yvonne, too, is neat;
her little gown is washed each We'd
nesday by grandmother at the trough
in the public square. where all the
| women of the village gather to do
| their clothes. On Wednesdays, per-
| force, Yvonne goes to bed.
SO we found her in the little white
house with the pink roof--a mass of
golden hair, a pair of big blue eyes
above the dark red counterpart,
while Suzanne, the goat, kept her
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