City and town life -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Last came the children, that I was going to march with; and someway they
were kind of the heart of the whole. And just in front of them was the
Mothers' Club--twenty or so of them, hard-worked, hopeful women, all
wanting life to be nice for their children, and trying, the best they
knew, to read up about it at their meetings. And they were marching that
day for the motherhood of the nations, and there wasn't one of them that
didn't feel it so. And the children ... when we turned the corner where
I could look back on them, I had all I could do--I had all I could do.
Three-four hundred of them, bobbing along, carrying any nation's flag
that came handy. And they meant so much more than they knew they meant,
like children always do.
"You're going to march for the little boys and girls in Europe that have
lost their folks," was all we said to them.
And when I see them coming along, looking round so sweet, dressed up in
what they had, and their hair combed up nice by somebody, somehow, there
came over me the picture of that little fellow with his brick, waiting
there for that pint of milk; and I squeezed up so on Bennie's hand that
I was walking with, that he looked up at me.
"You're lovin' me too hard in my fingers," he told me, candid.
"Oh, Bennie," I says, "you excuse me. I guess I was squeezing the hand
of every little last one of them, over there."
We all came into the Market Square, in the afternoon sunshine, with our
little still, peaceful street--laying and listening, and never knowing
it was like heaven at all. Every soul in town was there, I don't know of
one that didn't go. Even Luke Norris was there, his wind-pipe forgot. We
didn't have much exercises. Just being there was exercise enough. We
sung--no national airs, and above all, not our own; but just a hymn or
two that had in it all we could find of sympathy and love. There wasn't
anything else to say, only just those two things. Then Dr. June prayed,
brief:
"Lord God of Love, our hearts are full of love this day for all those
in Europe who are bereaved. We cannot speak about it very well--we
cannot show it very much. But Thou art love to them. Oh, draw us near in
spirit to those sorrowing over there, even as Thou are near to them all.
Amen."
Then the band played the Chopin funeral march, while we all stood still.
When it was done, up in the belfry of the new Town Hall, the new bell
that we were so proud of began to toll. And it seemed like the voice of
the town, saying something. We all went home to that bell, with the
children leading us. And nobody's store was opened again that day. For
the spirit of the time, and of Over There, was on the village like a
garment, and I suppose none of us spoke of anything else at supper, or
when the lamps were lit.
Quite a little while after supper I was sitting on my porch in the dark,
when Luke Norris and some of them came in my gate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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