Defenders of Democracy: Contributions from representative men and women of letters and other arts from our allies and our own country, edited by the Gift book committee of the Militia of MercyMilitia of Mercy (U.S.). Gift Book Committee
History
Defenders of Democracy: Contributions from representative men and women of letters and other arts from our allies and our own country, edited by the Gift book committee of the Militia of Mercy
Militia of Mercy (U.S.). Gift Book Committee
Gift books; World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Gift books
Her hands clasped tight, she peered at him through the shadows.
He did not move. He was sleeping heavily, curiously, irregularly,
his breath coming in jerky little snorts. "Oh," she wailed in her
guilt heart, "he is, he is! Poor dear old Joey, drunk! And it's
all, all my fault!" Swiftly she undressed in the dark. If he were
to awaken, to begin saying awful maudlin things---
Her heart pounding, she lifted the covers and crept into martyrdom
on the hard edge of the bed. Cameron slept on. Once he seemed
to be strangling in a bad dream, and she fought with her sense of
duty to awaken him, then, miserably, let him strangle!
Gravely Nellie's tired eyes traveled from familiar shadow to shadow,
to rest at last upon the dangling heap of clothes upon a chair by
the window that symbolized Joe Cameron by the sane light of day.
Fatigue tossed her off to sleep now and then; terror snatched her
back and made her cry. In the first faint dawn she awakened with
a start to find that in her sleep her tired body had slipped back
to its place, and her head was resting deliciously upon her pillow.
And, with the growing dawn, humor came creeping back, and try
as she would, her mouth twitched. Of all people, dear old Joey!
Carefully she turned her head and peered at him. His face was turned
toward her, what light there was fell full upon him. Wonder took
away her smile. His face was fresh, the lines of care and worry
softened away as if he were at the end of a two weeks' vacation.
She rested her chin on her arm, amazed, puzzled. And suddenly
a grin like the sunrise spread over Joe's face, and he opened his
eyes.
[signed] Alice Woods
By courtesy of "The Century."
To Those Who Go
In a sense the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who go
to France are modern crusaders. Like the valiant men of the Middle
Ages who traveled far to fight in strange lands for the ideal that
possessed their souls, these twentieth-century knights-errant go
to defend the ideals of liberty and right and honor which are the
issues of this war and which our Allies have successfully upheld
for more than three years.
In that chivalric spirit General Pershing stood at the tomb
of LaFayette and said, "LaFayette, we are here." As a young man
only twenty years old LaFayette went out to a new land to fight
for liberty, and now after nearly a century and a half the same
inspiration that sent him forth is taking our young men back to
fight in the land o his birth the old fight for right. The great
romance of international history which the relations of France and
America have afforded from the birth of this republic has entered
a new chapter with the pilgrimage of our fighting men to Europe,
and the inestimable service of LaFayette and his comrades to our
infant republic is now to be in part repaid by the nation that
France helped to establish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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