Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1924-06-20
ROMANCE
ACROSS
THE SEA
By H. IRVING KING
************s$::*s

If you should ever go to Paris be
sure and drop In at the Cafe Smlthers
In the Rue de Jacqueminot. There
you can get johnny cake, baked beans,
Drowned bread and Indian pudding
such as will make you feel yourself at
home-lf home for you happens to be
New England And this Is how 1t all
came about. Ephralm Crane few
years ago went over to France, and
as corporal was stationed for con-
siderable length of time in Paris and
became u frequenter of the Lion dor,
which rather langulshing restaurant
occupied the place now known rs the
Cafe Smithers, most flourlshing es-
Enlistment.
1t was not the cooking at the Lion
dor, which was only fair, nor the
wines, which were pretty bad, that at
tracted Corporal Crane to the little
cafe and made him linger there, but
Clotilde, the motherless daughter Of
the proprietor, Monsieur Boulais. The
pretty French girl held the raw-boned
New Hampshire youth as the pole star
holds the needle-only more so, for
the needle in the compass wobbles.
Clotilde and Ephraim snapped lessons
In French and English and got so that
In remarkably short time they could
not only converse with each other UNI
derstandlngly but could write little
notes to each other In u combination
Of the two languages. It might, It Is
true, have puzzled an outsider who
happened to see one Of these notes to
guess what the lovers were trying to
say-but then they did not write for
outsiders.
But alas the time came when Cor
poral Crane must leave. Clotllde wept
at parting and Ephralm would have
wept too, but for his desire to appear
"hard boiled" They promised to write
to each other-oh, ever so many times
There seemed hardly enough days In a
week for the number Of letters they
promised to exchange. And Ephrajm
was to come back and marry Clotilde
or she was to follow him across the
briny deep-they had not yet decided
which, Ephraim recalled another part
ing which he had had with Mary Ellen
Dodge the day he left home to be mus
tered in. Gracious, what an untlmely
thought He wondered II Mary Ellen
was waiting for him still. She had
not written very often Of late, or else
her letters had gone astray; and, he
felt with little twlnge Of conscience.
that his own homeward-bound letters
had not been as frequent for the past
two months as they might have been.
And-and-what should he say to
Mary Ellen when he arrived at Gran
lteville2
Ephralm was only twenty years old
you must excuse him.
On the way over he had time to
think things out, but the more he
thought the more he was perplexed.
And then he reached home and saw
Mary Ellen-and It was all up with
Clotilde and therefore, The excite
ment and adulation which always
and very properly-surrounds the
homecoming hero kept him from
broodlng too much for n while; but
even heroes, after time, are rele-
gated back into the common walks Of
life and so It was with Ephralm.
Then he began to worry. He wrote
and Clotllde wrote, Of course but
they committed nothing like the devas-
tation on the international paper sup
ply which they had agreed upon. His
youtiiful-looklng, well-to-do and very
capable mother saw that something
and ured him on in a wIlv way nntn