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RAE EE A aa a A GLAMOUR By Ex-Private X Author of "War Is War" Le Ee at RE a = Th Sr ype apa Bobby, aged ten, had come into his father's study to say good night. It was a nice warm room which always smelt delightfully of tobacco smoke. The boy, eager to refer bedtime, gen- erally tried to engage his father in conversation, and experience had taught him that the Great War was the most reliable topic. Innocent Mr. Prosser, forgetful of his own childhood and therefore un- aware of the low cunning of children, nearly always took the bait. He was now forty and respectable, but in his unregenerate twenties he had served as da private in the infantry on the Western front. His experiences of soldiering had tanght him that war was very uncomfortable for. the sol- dier, and that at times it was hardly safe. tle conceived it to be his duty to bring up Bobby to hate the idea of war. He had strong views that, if every parent in every country brought up the children to see the misery and folly of war, all wars would cease. "War," Mr. Prosser was saying, hav- ing swallowed the bait some ten min- utes since, "is filthy, cruel, and de- grading. You are killed or maimed from a distance and by an unlucky chance. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you had no opportunity of coming to grips with the men opposite you." Memories are shoii Mr. Prosser hated moving about in the open under had forgotten that, although he had showers of machine-gun bullets, hated crouching in a ditch with shells burst- ing around him, he had hated still more the prospect of meeting an enemy face to face. Cold steel was not to his taste. But now he was quite sincere in believing that it was. "But it wasn't like-that at Waterloo, was it?" said Bobby. Mr. Prosser leaped at the bait as a hungry pike in February takes a spin- ner. Waterloo was one of his hobbies. "Ah, no," he began, "there there was color, romance, beauty, glamour." And he proceeded to tell Bobby about the beautiful] uniforms worn by the men, and "Up, Guards, and at 'em!" and of how the officers had just previously been called away from a ball given in Brussels by the Duchess of Richmond. Byron had written a poem about the ball. It began: "There 'was a sound of revelry by night." And he started to recite it while Bobby, secretly bored, sucked a sweet and concentratsd his mind on something else, However, Master Prosser pre- ferred boredom to going to bed. : "Well," he suggested, "perhaps the next war will be like Waterloo." Once more Mr. Prosser was about to seize the bait. : "Never----," he begai. And then a female voice came dis- tinctly through the thin partition wall. "James! Hasn't the boy gone to bed yet?" ; "He's just goinz, dear,' aid Mr. Prosser. Bobby made his last effort. "Daddy," he began, "tell me about the time when you----m-" But this time Mr. Prosser saw the hook in the bait. "No," "he said, 'you we oli. You ought to have heen in bed twenty min- utes ago." Bobby gruntcd; he knew that argu- ment was hopeless. So he gave his father a kiss strongly flavoured with chocolate toffee, and went off, treading the stairs heavily on his way to bed, and leaving Mr. Prosser to dream over the glowing coals, Waterloo! Yes, : oud fur Laniry, romance, love, beauty, chivalry. Why had he not been born about a hundred and ten years before hi tine?! He might have been in that battle of 'Brave Men. He might have been at that ball in Brussels, and ~ eard, dur- ing the measure of a dance, that dra- matic order to saddle und mount be- cause the French were coming. And some beautiful creature with whom he was dancing might have melted into his arms before he was forced to tear himself away, and called him her hero. It was a bit of bad luck having been born in 1892. It did not occur to Mr. Prosser just then that when he had a tooth ont he always insistel on gas, and that when the necessity had arisen for the removal of his appendix the thing had been done while he was completely = unconscious. After all, there is something to be said for liv- ing in unromantic days. But Mr. Prosser was a dreamer, and suddenly a queer change came over him. He found himself lying on his stomach in a field of half-grown corn. The corn about him was very wet and the ground under him. was slush, for although the month was June -- the 18th of June, if he remembered right- ly--torrents of rain had fallen during a thunderstorm a few hours since. He wore a red tunic which had once look- ed magnificent, but since it had made!" any > contact with the mud it was no Vv» 80, The other fellows lying on either | gide of him looked equally sorry sights. One of them, who evidently intended to be as little uncomfortable as pos- sible, had a tin kettle attached to his equipment. Cannons were roaring in front and to the rear, and cannon balls, chain and grape shot, screamed overhead. A voice said, "I'm not afraid of can- non or musket balls. It's that grape." Away to the left, invisible unless he stood up, a farm was blazing. It was called Hoo-goo-Something. Outlandish names they had in Flanders. It had changed hands twice during the day. He had been with his regiment to help take it once. Part of another regi- ment had manned it, and his crowd had been ordered to another position. Then a Very Important Person with a hooked nose, followed by a bevy of staff officers, had galloped round and cried: "Well done, 48th." This was gratifying, of course, but it did not compensate him for the terror he had suffered. That Very Important Person was now alternately blaspheming and pray- ing for night or Blucher. He was somewhere behind on the hillside look- ing anxiously through field-glasses. -Behind him, on top of the hill, and watching no less anxiously, was a Mr. Rothstein. = He had a financial in- terest in the result of the battle. Mr. Prosser began to remember things. The hill on which he was ly- ing was called Mont St. Something-or- other, although it wasn't in the least like a mountain. The plain in front was called Waterloo. More of these outlandish names! There had been a ball in Brussels a few nights since, but Mr. Prosser had not been a guest, because he was not an officer. He had spent that evening in a granary where he was 'billeted, cleaning his equipment in the pres- ence of a few comrades and a few thousand rats. The rats seemed hap- py enough, but he and his comrades were not. They were all tired, bored, highly strung and nervous, and they were annoyed at being over-charged for a sour red wine which wasn't fit for Englishmen to drink. They were hardly asleep before they \/ere routed out and called to arm.. Boney the bogie was coming--the little man who had crowned himself Emperor of the World, and who now stood a mile away, anxious but half asleep. Half asleep because the seeds of the dis- ease which was to kill him had al- ready begun to germinate. Then they had been marched away almost as far as their blistered feet could have taken them, and there had been a fight. Mr. Prosser had not been much concerned with the fight, because -his regiment was not in the advance guard, which bore the bruit. But that had not stopped him from being terrified, and ever since he had been very hungry. Rations were very scarce just now. There sounded a distant .hunder of hoofs. An officer on the look-out a few yards in front of Mr, Prosser sprang up and shouted: "They're com- ing! Form square!" - And in a few seconds Mr. Prosser's company miraculously became a square. Mr. Prosser and his comrades were armed with muskets familiarly known as Brown Bess. They were mortally effective up to a range of a hundred yards and mr re or less accur- ate up to twenty yards. A knife was attached to the end of Mr. Prossers musket, and it was called a bayonet, because the invention had sprung from the fertile brain of a gentleman who lived in Bayonne. The Brown Bess had to be loaded from the muzzle, and this took time. Ammunition could not be wasted. Hence the order from the ensign, who was outwardly calni: "Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes." The square bristled with bayonets. On all sides the front rang knelt and 'mostly from horses the rear rank stood. The thundering hoofs grew louder and louder nearer and at last they swept over the ridge, fine men and fine boys, with the light at play on swords and breast- plates. They were nearly all boys of from sixteen to nineteen and men in the forties, for the youth of France had already been sacrificed on the altar of a common man's ambition. They rode a few yards apart, not as one sees them in romantic pictures, else in making play with their swords they wold have slashed one another. The side of the square facing the oncomers suddenly loosed its volley. Saddles emptied. There were screams, which rolled, foamed and kicked. Amid the terrors of his soul, Mr. Prossed wished that horses wouldn't make so much noise when they were hurt. Two maddened horses bearing dead bodies flung themselves against the rows of bayonets. They plunged away, neighing and screaming and shedding their burdens. French officers with brown faces and fierce moustaches rode' up and discharged pistols into the faces of the men who stood cr knelt staunchly and remained like rocks. Some fell, but the ranks were closed and the square remained a square. . The French horsemen wheeled from wall to wall of this square, as if try- ing to find a gap in the hedge of steel. There was none, and on every side they received a volley, whil those who had fired first were feverishly re- loading. Thn they flung themselves heroically against the bayonets, cut- ting and slashing, while their wounded horses pushed men over in heaps be- fore the poor beasts plunged squealing away Men rolled over screaming with faces slashed open and half-lopped limbs. The dead were pushed away, the wounded drawn into the square. The square grew smaller and smaller, but still it was a square. The French attacked again and again, their chargers often tripping over other horses, which lay on their backs kick- ing in their death throes and perhaps wondering why men had done this thing to them. The there came another thundering of hoofs, this time from another direc- tion. A British squadron was coming up. The French cavalry, now out- numbered because of their losses, and disorganized by having had to attack all sides of the square, began to.make off. There were cheers and a wild race down the slope, slashings, and the ring "4 sword against sword, screams and hopeless cries for quar- ter. Then the British squadron, not to be led too far, : 3de back waving their swords to the men of the wrecked square. > A very gallant sight, but Mr. Pros- ser, licking a gashed hand, did not look on it in that way at the time. The square remained a square against the possibility of the French re-forming and resuming the attack. Mr. Prosser's heart began to beat a little slower, but he was far from hap- py. His clothes, sodden with rain, mud, and eweat, stuck to him like one enormous poultice, His hand began to throb rather badly. It was his right hand, too. If they attacked again he could hardly hold his musket steady. His attention rixed itself on a Frenchman a few yards distant, writh- ing on his back, like an overturned beetle. He was spluttering words in a language which Mr. Prosser did not understand Stricken horses all around squealed in their own language for the coup de grace. The wounded of Mr. Prosser's company moaned and sobbed and niade shift with rough bandages to dress their own and one another's wounds. Suldenly there was firing in the dis- tance. At first Mr. Prosser did "not know what it meant. Two men did. and | To one it meant St. Helena. The other could hardly feel cool laurels on his brow. Minutes went by before the cry went round the regiments--"The Prussians! The Prussians at last!" Mr. Prosser was intensely relieved, so much so that he was hardly affect- ed by a conversation he overheard. "Load your Bess and put a ball through my brain, mate. My leg's smashed." a "Tush! There's plenty of life in you yet." "I know. They'll take me for miles and miles in a jolting wagon. And they'll saw off my leg and dip the stump in boiling tar to seal the artery. And I can't bear the thought of it." "Don't worry, man. They give you so much rum that you hardly feel it." "I can't help it, mate. I don't be- lieve it. Put a ball through my brain and finish me now. Let me die like a man." Horses screamed and men moaned, and Mr. Prosser woke up and found himself staring into the red coals of the fire. He repeated to himself his own words to hisgson: "There there was color, romance, beauty, glamour." "Well, I wonder!" said Mr. Prosser, aloud.--London "Tit-Bits." EI Threefold Time (From New Verse.) Time is a sea. There if I could but sail : Forever and outface death's bullying gale I'd ask no more. From that great pond I'd fish At pleasure every poet's queror's wish. The treasure of that deep's unbatton- ed hold I'd rifle clean till it and I were old, And of that salvage worlds on worlds would make, Newer than tarried for sake. and con- Columbus' Time's a fire-wheel whose spokes the season's turn, And fastened there we, Time's slow martyr's burn. To some that rage is but a pleasant heat, / And the red fiery bower as summer sweet. Others there are that lord it in the flame, And while they're burning, dice for power and fame. A choicer company ignore the pyre. And dream and prophesy amid the fire. And a few with eyes uplifted through the blaze Let their flesh crumble till they're all a-gaze Glassing the fireless kingdom in the sky That is our dream as through Time's wood we fly Burning in silence, or crying "in an- 'cient rhyme: Who shall outscar the mountainous flamé of Time? --REdwin Muir, in New Verse. RE) Ala Fancy Dress at Weddings A correspondent of a London, Eng. daily newspaper says: "It is a won- der that no protest has been made by Church authorities against the in- creasing use of 'Fancy dress' at so- ciety weddings. The costumes worn by bridesmaids and pages at some weddings give the impression that the proceedings have some relation to the Chelsea Arts Ball, or that the Bright Young Things have had a hand in, it." WINE pa ei oe "Radio has revolutionized thing."---William Lyon Phelps. oe every- "In a hundred years I do not think there will be any novels."'--Booth Tarkington. First Plane On Exhibit in London chine to carry a man into the clouds. The historie Back in the days when flying was 'impossible, Orville Wright built the firct powered flying ma machine is on exhibit at the Science SRE museum, Lon- don, pending the bridging of a rift between Wright and the Smithsonian Institute LJ . Winter Play Elsie F. Kartaer As [ glanced from my window, I saw five-year-old John eome out . of his house, which was next to mine. He was properly dressed for outdoor play on a snowy day, but he had nothing with which to play. As his mother closed the door, she said, "Now dont sit down anywhere; keep moving so that you wont be cold." John looked aimlessly around for a few moments, watched a truck until it was out of sight, called to the passing mailman, tried unsuccessfully to coax a dog to him, and then, seeming to feel that he had exhausted all other possibilities, he kicked about in the snow at the edge of the walk. This became interesting, and he walked in- to the midst of the small patch of snow in his yard and began to make snowballs. He seemed quite happy in this occupation for about ten minutes when suddenly the door opened and bis mother reappeared. "John, John," she cried, "come right here to me. What do you mean by playing in the snow? Just look at your new mittens that Grandmother gave you for Christmas! They are soaked through and just ruined! Come into the house at once!" John resisted, but was nevertheless dragged in by his anxious mother. "Poor child!" I commented, as my thoughts went back to my own child- hood. Some of my happiest memories were centered about the snow. What fun we used to have--my brothers and sisters and I and our playmates! I recalled the snow-men and the forts that we built and the battles we had with our snowball ammunition, the tunnels that we made in the deep snow and the joy of coasting. No normal child can resist the snow. The sensible mother will realize how much joy the child gets from it and will. make this play possible. He should, of course, be appropriately dressed, with coat, leggings, warm cap, scarf and mittens. The clothing should protect but not hamper the child. It should be able to stand hard usage for if he has to think of his clothes, part of the joy of his play is gone. A pair of thick woollen mittens is preferable to kid mittens unless the latter are waterproof, for woollen ones, when soaked, can be dried again and are just as good as new. Suitably dressed, when well, the child should be allowed his play in the snow at least a few minutes each day. If possible, he should have playmates, and then he will have experiences that no other activity can give. Poor little John! Since he- had na companions he should certainly have had a sled to drag around after him or a little snow shovel to play with, Either of these would have kept him active and happy. How unfortunate that his mother should have thought more of the kid mittens than of her childs joy in playing in the snow and the health-giving results. -- Issued by the National Kindergarten Associa tion, 8 West 40th Street, New York City. These articles are appearing weekly in our columns. eee. Gems From Life's Scrapbook The New Year ; "If this be a happy new year, a year of usefulness, a year in which we shall live to make this earth better, it is because God will direct our pathway. How important then to feel our de pendence upon Him!" -- Bishop Mat: hew Simpson. «mach succeeding year unfolds wis dom, beauty and holiness. Life and goodness are immortal. Let us then shape. our views of existence into loveliness, freshness, and continuity rather than into age and blight." -- Mary Baker Eddy. "Let the new year be a year of tree- dom irom sin, a year of service, a year of trust in God, and it will be a hapry year from first to last." J." IM. Duck: ley, D.D. "Ie who has found upon earth the city of his affections, and who with every onward step is only advancing toward a mist, may well look upon New Year's Day as a day of sorrow. There are many, I am aware, to whom the thought of the flight of time is dispiriting. For me, I feel that He hath not given the spirit of fear, but of power."--Dr. A. Tholuck. "A.D.--the world writes the letters carelessly as it turns the page to Tre- cord for the first time the new year; but in these letters is the 'open sec- ret' of the ages, for this, too, is a 'year of our Lord, an 'acceptable year, a 'year of grace." -- Jesse B. Thomas, D.D. 0 orn tod A Smile : Farmer Smathers -- "Are you still bothered with those relatives from the city who came every Sunday to eat a big dinner and then never invited you to return?" Farmer Jeffreys--"No, they finally took the hint." } Farmer Smathers--*"What did yo say to them?" Farmer Jeffreys--' 'Nothing. We just 'served sponge cake every time they came and they finally got wise."