The Washington herald., 1922-09-28
FOR THE SALLOW SKINNED
By ANTOINETTE DONNELLY

Dy nv = S1ANxS = i - bS1NIN1AL
NEW YoRK.-(Special Correspon-
dence.)-The following letter I re-
ceived recently from a correspon-
dent. and as first hand experience is
always worth considering 1 pass 1t
on to those whose coarse and SAL
low skin has been a matter Of un-
happiness
My Dear Miss Donnelly: May I
he marveled at how quickly the
system had grasped him. He was
a soldier-all who were not SOL
diers were civilians. The world
was divided primarily into those
two classifcations.
IL occurred to him that all
strongly accentuated classes, such
as the military. divided men INFO
two kinds: their own kind-and
those without. To the clergyman
there were clergy and laity. to the
Catholic there were Catholics and
non-Catholics to the negro the-e
were blacks and whites, to the
prisoner there were the imprisoned
and the FREQ. to the sick man there
were the sick and the well.
So. without thinking of 1t once in
his lifetime, he had been q Civilian,
layman. a non-Catholic. a GEN
tile, white. free an well. .
As the American troops were
poured into the French and British
trenches he began to nd the names
OF many Harvard men among the
casualties recorded in the Army
and Navy Journal. But for all the
sweat and blood the situation ap-
peared unchanged. and he saw no
prospect of the wars ending in the
perceptible future. In the old
chronicles the right wing of one
army always defeated the left
wing of the other, the left wing
being. meanwhile, vanquished by
the enemy's right. After that the
mercenaries fled. 1t had been so
simple. in those days, almost as Il
prearranged.
Gloria wrote that she was read
Ing a great deal. What a mess
they had made Of their affairs, she
said. She had so little to do now
that she spent her time imagining
how differently things might have
turned out. Her whole environ
ment appeared insecure-and
few years back she had seemed to
hold all the strings in her own
little hand.
In June her letters grew hurried
and less frequent. She suddenly
ceased to write about coming
South.
March in the country around was
rare with Jasmine and Jonquils and
patches of violets in the warming
grass. Afterward he remembered
especially one afternoon of such a
fresh and magic glamour that as
he stood in the rifle pit marking
targets he recited "Atalanta IN
Calydon" to an uncomprehending
Pole. his voice mingling with the
rip. sing and splatter of the bull
let's overhead
When the hounds of spring. :"
Spang!
Are on winters traces :"
Whirr-r-r-ri
The mother of months :"
Hey! Come to. Mark three-e-e.
In town the streets were in
sleepy dream again, and together
Anthony and Dot idled in their
own tracks of the previous autumn
until he began to feel a drowsy At
tachment for this South-a South.
it seemed, more of Alsiers than Of
Italy. with faded aspirations point
ing back over innumerable genera
tions to some warm, primitive Mir
vana, without hope or care. Here
there was an infection of cordi-
ality. of comprehension, in every
voice. Life plays the same lovely
and agonizing joke on all of u.s."
they seemed to say in their plain
tive pleasant cadence, in the rising
infection terminating on an un-
resolved minor.
He liked his barber shop, where
he was Hi. corporal" to a pale,
emaciated young man, who shaved
him and pushed a cool vibrating
machine endlessly over his insa-
table head. He liked "Johnston's
Gardens" where they danced, where
a tragic negro made yearning. ach-
ing music on a saxophone until the
garish hall became an enchanted
jungle of barbaric rhythms and
smoky laughter. where to forget
the uneventful passage of time upon
Dorothy's soft signs and tender
whisperings was the consumma-
ton of all aspiration, of all con-
tent.
There was an undertone of sad
ness in her character, a conscious
evasion of all except the pleasur-
able minutiae of life. Her violet
eyes would remain for hours ap-
parently insensate as, thought sss
and reckless, she basked like a cat
in the sun. He wondered what the
tired, spiritless mother thought Of
them. and whether in her moments
of uttermost cynicism she ever
guessed at their relationship.
On Sunday afternoons they
walked along the countryside. rest
ing at intervals on the dry moss in
the outskirts of a wood. Here The
birds had gathered and the clus-
ters of violets and white dogwood;
here the hoar trees shone crystal
line and cool. oblivious to the in
heat that waited out
side; here he would talk. intermit-
tently. in a sleepy monologue. in a
of no significance. of
no replies.
Na,ts,..S T...a--o..