Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1948-02-13
By KATHLEEN NORRIS
Bell syndicate.-wNu Features.

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Fl came to me recently.
l. 1 1t asks no question,
but I'm putting it here be-
cause it makes me think Sc
riously and begin to answer
a great many questions in my
own heart. 1t comes from a
friend of mine who is living in
a cruelly-devastated country;
she is A years old, living now
with her mother, and two neph-
ews of 10 and IL.
Ten years ago she was young,
confident, the loved wife of a rising
attorney. met husband and wife
when they came to New York in
1898, and thought them charming
and cultured people. After that their
daughter was born and then their
son, and they sent me pictures of
two small, well-bundled babies, on
sled, in snowy handsome city
street.
The babies are gone now, both of
them, one killed suddenly and vio-
lSAtiy LII 1dlo, OllS lluSSl ulS
through long winter of starvation.
The handsome young clever hus-
band is dead, too, though she
doesn't know how, where or why he
died. Even the city has vanished,
and when she wrote me three years
ago, all she had was a plot of ashy
ruins in a waste or rubble and fallen
masonry.
Well, that was three years ago.
Here is a part of the letter I re-
ceived recently.
''The operation, so crudely DONE"
she writes, Twas nevertheless sue
cessful, for l am in better health
than ever had in my life. did not
write you that, frightened, cold and
in rags, mother and found my sis
ter's two boys a year ago; they are
now 10 and IL. could remember, if l
let myself, their coming to such a
proud young mother, their growing
in such lovely nursery-but I don't
let myself remember. We dug in the
ruins, we three, found part Of
basement room intact, walked three
miles every other day to the blessed
American relief that never failed
us.
Seed Grain Sprouted.
presently the men were clearing
our fields, presently we asked for
seed grain, and after long time it
came, and we cried for joy when the
little shoots began to show. The boys
found apple trees, old and broken,
and we got prunings; we have
apples this winter. We are seven
families, working together, living in
cold lairs, still depending upon your
generous hands for food-but begin
ming again. Every carrot, potato,
cabbage that came up was precious,
every rabbit we raised from wild
stock. The discovery of bolts of cur
tanning, buried in rubbish, survivals
from some old store, gave the
women of our group the happiest
days they had ever known. Your
needles, thread, thimbles came, and
was the most envied woman in the
village.
1.-THE boys and I have cleared
three upper rooms now, bricked
them in. Yes, my dear, the years in
which l practiced scales might
better have been employed in learn
ing to cook and lay bricks, but l
can do both now.
Windows, Hot Water Coming.
Next spring-window glass, they
tell us, and hot water pipes in some
places! Oh, the luxury, the satisfac-
ton of digging all of this out of the
unspeakable desolation of the five
years that preceded it. l have
learned to forget, l have learned
that we are all poor human crea-
lures stumbling about in the dark,
letting the real things 60 for the
false things, hating when it is so
much simpler and easier to love,
following wrong guides. How dares
any one of US ever lay the blame for
it all on another!