The Coolidge examiner., 1932-05-13

wet-eyed. crammed the small sta.
ton to see the boys off. he took a
girl he had called Sweet Annie
Laurie for the greater part Of his
llfe into his arms. and there In the
melee Of unleashed emotions, kissed
her roundly and soundly on her
beautiful lips.
Let this last you, Dear Heart.
until | return" he said.
You know will, without my
saying IT. Myron."
And so she would have, except
Tor what happened.
War doomed on; the weeks
stretched into months and the
months into years and in a small
Middle Western town a girl named
Laure Moore kept tryst and wait
ed. Ii was a fearful kind of wait
ing: the kind that caused one TO
pick up every mornings paper with
DATED breath. and the sight of a
messenger boy running up a flight
OF front steps was sufficient TO
strike terror into the heart.
Strained waiting months Of anxiety,
mingled with hope; of terror, miti-
gated by prayer.
Ano then one day. near verdun.
under an exploding shell, that as
ii fell lighted the countryside In a
wide white grin. Myron Gilmore.
crouching for attack, felt the lower
half OF his face seem TO move; take
wings; take flight. Almost just that
happened. One of those devastat-
ing facial accidents that brought
about the wonders of a new science
called plastic surgery had befallen
Myron. tearing away part Of the
lower Jaw and mutilating. almost
beyond recognition, the personable
face of the young man who had
hidden Laura Moore good-by.
Then the same old story. Month
after month in one hospital after
another. where from time TO time
the various experimental treat
ments were tried out. The wound
had healed fairly well, but the
great problem lay in restoration.
Paraffin and silver had been tried
for purposes of filling out the shot
away jaw and lower lip. but be-
cause of certain ligament difficult
ties, the substance would not hold
and slowly but surely the impro-
vised structure of MyrOn's lower
Jaw would begin to collapse, reveal
ing the upper line of his side teeth.
1t made him rather horrible.
Something like a skull-head, If you
beheld him from the left, and as
the months dragged on, there de-
veloped in Myron, over this re-
curing tragedy of the exposed side
of his face, q sensitiveness that was
torture and torment. Day after
day, he lay on his cot. face to wall,
cOncealing from even his ward
mates what he regarded as the hor-
lOl VI Ills NOunlcIdnNC.
Months since he had ceased re-
plying TO the eager imploring let
ters that came from Laura.
Then one day he resorted TO a
ruse. Two weeks after the signing
of the armistice. there went across
seas a letter to Laura Moore bear
ing the tidings that Myron had died
of a septic infection of the jaw.
That somehow made things sim
pier; easier for Myron to bear. You
could manage TO go through life
with a paraffin jaw, If need to be,
just so long as you did not drag
into the torment of your little hell,
the lovely figure of the girl whose
lips your own had pressed in prom
Use of bright days to come.
II was at hospital in Paris they
finally succeeded in perfecting a
lower jaw of silver and paraffin
that held firmly and except to the
closely observing, the face of N.Y.
ron. with the exception of a rigid
ity which suggested partial paral-
ySis, was not any too noticably
SCARED. OF course ii was obvious
that here was a face somehow not
of normal cast, but 1t was not a
countenance 10 cause one to recoil.
In other words, but for the inev-
liable handicap, of such a defect,
Myron's disability, except in his
own consciousness, was not the
calamity it had threatened to be.
Pulling himself together and taking
up the routine of life, there re-
manned within him this one form of
sensitiveness that was little short
of mania.
he believed himself a horror in
the eyes of man. Which he was
not. He nodded his life according
ly, finding himself a position in
an English bank in the city of Paris
and practically living the life Of a
recluse.
II was too bad all the way
around. not only because the obses-
sion that his silver lips would have
been so terribly repellent to Laura,
but because they further reduced
his life TO the narrow iuSterleSs