The Washington herald., 1921-07-03

He was homesick-as desperately home
sick as only a boy who cannot 50 much as
remember home can be. They had brought
him over when he was very small. Such
memories as he had Of home were vague.
fagmentary. Trains running on . high
platform; a tan tower. in the center of q
city, with the huge statue of a man in a
broad brimmed hat on top Of it: beach.
where he had played with other children;
policemen In yellow helmets and long
coats
He had pieced out his memories with
scraps and bits Of pictures out Of books that
he bad read almost surrepttiously. His
mother had not approved of American sto-
rsea fs<u he had spent long hours IN his
father's Hfrary. There was dull reading on
those shelves for a boy you might have
thought. But Bill would have challenged
you nerce}y on that score. He knew John
Fiske's -American Revolution almost by
heart before he was twelve: Hays great life
of Lincoln was like the Bible to him. And
he had found, and lost, and found again
the most precious Of all his books The
Story of q Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey
AIfrich-
1t was in the pages Of that book that the
America he had never known had lived for
him. Through Aldrich's eyes he saw long
winters of snowy roads and fields. and
frozen ponds, as unlike as they could be to
the open English country Of the midlands
where his school was: glowing autumns,
when the woods and hills were painted in
thousand colors: days and nights Of mis-
chievous delight.
His mother, when he asked her, fnno-
Gently, about this and that, was appalled,; she
had taken the book from him. condemning
Il to be burnt It's very title was anathena
to her, a glance at its pages confirmed her
fear that it shrieked with the blatant cru
dity Of the America that she had put behind
her. But he saved It. and had gained.
through It's peril, the knowledge that his
secret hopes and lodgings must be forever
hidden from the mother, lovely, remote, he
worshiped.
His life had been odd, confused. There
had been q time Of wandering about In
France. Germany, Italy; a time when he had
seen much Of nurse and governess and little
of his mother. He could remember her, ra-
diant and shining. dressed for -theater or
opera, stopping in to bend over his bed for
a moment. Sometimes, on rare mornings
he had been allowed to 60 into her room
before he was dressed. Then school; an
English public school He had taken his
knocks as a youngster; fought his way up
through the lower school till now he was in
the Fifth and reasonably sure Of landing in
the sacred precincts of the Sixth next term.
with the prospect Of being a prefect, per-
haps. before so very long.
And to the long wanderings on the CONT
nent, when he had moved back and forth
across Europe, seeing Paris, Dresden. VI
emma, Munich, Rome. Naples, Venice, there
had succeeded the ordered and settled life
in England School always, in the fore
ground; the house near Swaythling, in the
lovely Hampshire country. which he really
uhed; the smart little town house near Hyde
Park He was happy enough; he had every
thing a boy could be supposed to want.
Heaven knows.
But he had never quite stopped wanting
10 20 home. It had been a great day when
h ha1 discovered that the decks Of South