The Valley of Vision : A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told TalesVan Dyke, Henry
General
The Valley of Vision : A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales
Van Dyke, Henry
Religious fiction, American; Short stories, American
The men are generally less industrious than the women. But they
work willingly at the grading of roads and paths, the laying out
and planting of flower-beds, the construction of ornamental designs,
of doubtful taste but unquestionable sincerity.
You read the names which they have given to the different streets
and barracks, and the passageways between the cubicles, and you
understand the strong, instinctive love which binds them to their
native Belgium. “Antwerp Avenue,” “Louvain Avenue,” “Malines Street,”
“Liege Street,” and streets bearing the names of many ruined towns
and villages of which you have never heard, but which are forever
dear to the hearts of these exiles. The names of the hero-king,
Albert, and of his brave consort, Queen Elizabeth, are honored by
inscriptions, and their pictures, cut from, newspapers, decorate
the schoolrooms and the little family cubicles.
The brutal power which reigns at Berlin may drive the Belgians out
of Belgium by terror and oppression. But it cannot drive Belgium
out of the hearts of the Belgians. While they live their country
lives, and Albert is still their King.
But think of the unnatural conditions into which these thousands
of human beings--yes, and hundreds of thousands like them, torn
from their homes, uprooted, dispersed, impoverished--are forced by
this bitter, cruel war. Think of the cold and ruined hearthstones,
the scattered families, the shelterless children, the desolate and
broken hearts. This is what Germany has inflicted upon mankind in
order to realize her robber-dream!
Yet the City of Refuge, being human, has its bright spots and its
bits of compensation. Here is one, out of many.
The chief nurse, a young Dutch lady of charming face and manners,
serving as a volunteer under the sacred sign of the Red Cross,
comes in, one morning, to make her report to the commandant.
“Well,” he says, disguising in his big voice of command the warm
admiration which he feels for the lady, “what is the trouble to-day?
Speak up.”
“Nothing, sir,” she answers calmly. “Everything is going on pretty
well. No new cases of measles--those in hospital improving. The
only thing that bothers me is the continual complaint about that
Mrs. Van Orley--you remember her, a thin, dark little person. She
is melancholy and morose, quarrels all the time, says some one has
stolen her children. The people near her in the barracks complain
that she disturbs them at night, moans and talks aloud in her sleep,
jumps up and runs down the corridor laughing or crying: 'Here they
are!' They don't believe she ever had any children. They think
she is crazy and want her put out. But I don't agree with that. I
think she has had children, and now she has dreams.”
“Send her away,” growls the commandant; “send her to a sanatorium!
This camp is not a lunatic asylum.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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