Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 209, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1918 — Page 2

“A Letter To Mr. Somebody”

By LOUISE OLIVER

(Copyright, IMB, byjthe McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) Philip sat thoughtfully down on the fire step of the trench. The German musketry had ceased for the time and all was quiet along the line. Three of the men in his platoon had been wounded and taken back to the firstaid stations behind the lines. But he hadn’t a scratch. Bbside him, crouching in a variety of attitudes, were five of the boys playing cards. Someone had produced a dog-eared, muddy pack, and now they were having a round of jackpots. The entire crowd had an aggregate of less than a dollar, all told. “Come on in, Pearson, the betting’s fine,” called Dorgan. “Sky’s the limit.” But Philip shook his head. “It hurts my finer feelings to see my fellow beings risking their Immortal souls. I can’t be a party to the outrage. Besides, I’m broke.” “Poor Phil!” Dorgan drew three cards. “Lonely again." “Who’s he got to be lonely for?” Kearney, new to the company, didn’t know Phil's history. “Nobody. That’s the trouble. We cusses here think we’re killed because we can’t see our folks. But did you ever think what it meant not to have any folks to get homesick for? That’s Phil’s trouble. He just naturally hasn’t got anybody. That’s what he’s thinking this minute. Til bet a jitney. Never gets any mail —never hears from anyone. By George, here comes Bandy now with letters. Hurrah I The mail’s in, Jimmy! All those for me, chaplain? Well, this is my day.” Philip sat stolidly on the fire step, without moving. He knew the chaplain had no mail for him. All the other boys were busily tearing open letters and papers and hungrily devouring every word. Then the chaplain stopped in front of him and put a hand on his shoulder. “My boy, I wonder if---” He put his other hand in his pocket and drew out ’a letter. “I don’t approve of this — much. I don’t have any idea what’s inside, but I’m going to leave it with you.” Philip took the letter ’ eagerly and scanned the address. It was written in a rather angular feminine hand on plain white paper and directed to: MR. SOMEBODY, American Expeditionary Forces, i France. Puzzled, he slid his trench knife under the flap and drew out the closely written folded pages. The letter began: “Dear Mr. Somebody: Before you read my letter I’m going to ask whether or not you are getting mail from home and friends. If you are, will you please give this to someone who is not, for this is not your letter, then, but his. lam writing to a lonely man who has no one to care about him —not to you.” Philip paused. Strange that the chaplain had followed the directions so closely without divining the contents. He turned again to the letter. Surely the letter had reached its Intended destination. Who else had a better right to it than he? Then suddenly a revulsion of feeling seized him. He didn’t want sympathy, he didn’t want to read a lot of Sunday school stuff about patiently bearing one’s lot and being sustained by pride in what he was doing. His eyes ran rebelllously over the next few words, then he read more eagerly, and before he knew it —but let us read the letter. “First of all,” it ran, 'Tm going to wish a family onto you, Mr. Somebody—my family. And I’m going to tell you all about what we’ve been doing. Maybe you’ll want to hear about them and maybe you won’t, but I absolutely refuse to sympathize with your loneliness and write consoling things like that. And as I have to have something to put into a letter, you will just have to be patient. And I’m not going to introduce them. I will speak of them as though you’d known us all forever.

“To begin, Mr. Peabody finally came across and gave Dad the position as department head that he should have had years ago. Oh, you don’t know what it meant to us I Or, I forgot, you do know, of course. When Dad came home that night and told us, Buddy stood right up in the middle of the dining-room table and started to recite Webster’s oration, knocking over my vase of clove shrub, the first out of the garden, and ruining a bran clean tablecloth that had taken me forty-seven minutes to iron. But I was in a forgiving humor, of course, and merely kissed him and ordered him down. Lotty gave Dad a hug that nearly strangled him and marched right upstairs and returned with everyone—everyone—mind you, of her old dresses over her arm.” “‘Now, Sis,’ she demanded, ‘can’ll give these to the poor Harbisons right away, and get that pink-embroided voile and the Peter Tom suit tomorrow? • ■ / . I was ready to promise anything, my dear sir, but all the while I was thinking how fine It would be to have the money for the gas and milk and* butcher and grocery man without Dad’s having to sit up till midnight figuring bow to make the money stretch. “Well, that’s that Already Dad

♦ looks ten years younger, and last* night when he was shaving I heard him whistling. Wasn’t it wonderful! “The Emerys next door are having their house painted with mahogany trimmings. It was a dear of a house before they bought it and looked so lovely white. But Mr. Emery had made a fortune in munitions and he’s building a stone addition to it Imagine! Some way I think houses are like people, don’t you? I mean, they show what kind of people live in them. Our house looks like the home of poor genteel, as we’re usually called. Vines and things growing up to hide places where we need a carpenter and painter. It’s like shoe polish on an old pair of shoes. But I think if one’s shoes are old, it’s better to have them polished than not, don’t you? “But talking of the house and vines brings me to my hobby. My garden— I don’t know whether you like flowers or not —but I just have to tell you about It. Just now I’m writing out here in an old green swing under a pink heaven of blossoms. The trees are all out and the birds are fairly bursting their little throats for joy. “And the bed of white and red tulips over the fence is blooming so bravely—it is as good as a sermon on courage. And over by the shed —but of course you can’t see the shed for the bushes. I’ll just have to tell you it’s there —the lilacs are coming out. Can’t you smell that exquisite deliciousness away over there in your trench? Surely heaven will have hedges of lilacs. And the shrubs are out —the snowballs a lovely tender greenish white. How I wish you could see it, Mr. Somebody. “And now, I’m going to tell you a secret. I hadn’t intended to, but pomeway I feel' that you are sympathetic, that you’ll understand. “I have a soldier, a lonely soldier. He must be away over In France, and it is my fault he is lonely, for we quarreled and he went away, and now I can’t find out where he is. So after all, this is his letter you are getting. Oh, I wish someone would write to him —for lie is lonely, I know. He had nobody but me. And, oh, if I only knew, so I could ask him to forgive. “This is all for this time, Mr. pomebody. If you like my letter and send me your name and address, I’ll write again. “Faithfully yours, “Elizabeth Downing, “Somerset, Mass.” This was Philip’s answer: “Dearest Little Betty.—Mr. Somebody got your letter, and what do you think? It was I. You see God must have guided it here. So you want me to forgive you, sweetheart. Dearest, I’m not fit to kiss the hem of your dainty little dress. I adore you and always will. But since I got your letter I determined to live and go back to you. Before, I resented every crack the -other fellows got Instead of me. There, the post’s going out and I must send this, but I’ll write every day. Good-bye, dearest girl. “Forever yours, Philip.”

FINDS CALL STIRS HIM UP

City Conductor's Call, “Let ’Em Off First!” Acts Like a Tonic on This Writer. That day does not start right when I flo not go to work by public conveyance. I can motor to work, or I can walk, as I sometimes do, and hear all the sounds incident to busy streets — the honking of horns, the whistles of the traffic policemen and the shouting of newsboys. These all help in getting me. in key for the day’s work, but they do not tyke the place of the conductor’s plea to the clamorous crowds on the railway platforms, “Let ’em off first!” The command is given in a tone of Authority that forces the people to stand back. You meditate upon what would happen but for the trainman’s solicitude for his passengers. The little blond stenographer who sat beside you would without doubt be carried to the next station, or maybe a dozen stations beyond, and, being late, be fired. You yourself, for that matter, might be whisked on past your station and fall into a passion that would cause your breakfast to sour and make you surly all day. And there is always tragedy in that frame of mind, since a man has to be placid these days or lose his nerves, his job, and everything. ' “Let ’em off first!” —the command affects one in another way, too. It carries a suggestfbn that one wants to get off, and that suggestion presently works itself into a command to you to get off—a sort of challenge to stay on if you dare. You battle the suggestion manfully from one station to another, until, by the time you reach your stop, your mind is keyed up to concert pitch; you are thoroughly awake, and attack your day’s work with an energy that is unknown to the man who, immersed in his morning papers, is lost to what is going on around him. —T. C. O’Donnell in Cartoons Magazine.

Particularly Cruel Murder.

An atrocious murder took place the other night in the village Bagundi in Blsirhat, India. It is reported that a married Mahomedan woman w-as ill for three days and her husband after obtaining all the available Assistance without any effect sat by the side of his wife on the veranda when some unknown persons got over the boundary wall and one of them fired a gun toward the couple. The husband was shot in the chest and died on the spot and a bullet passed through the arm of his wife. Vigorous inquiry is proreeding but no trace of the culprits has yet been found nor the motive of thq murder ascertained.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

WILL FLY ACROSS the ATLANTIC

Italian Aviator Believes Feat Can be Accomplished Easilu With the Caproni Plane

1 f T L |IEUT. LEOPOLD BELLONI .I I lof the Royal Italian flying corps, now in . this country, says positively that the transatlantic. airplane flight will be -made. While he does not set a definite time for the start, he says that a Capronl airplane will turn the trick. This western ocean flight has been talked of rfnfl dreamed of for many years. Three things are essential for it. They are faith, skill and organization. With these Lieutenant Belloni believes success is sure. Italy has the faith, she has the skill in the trained aviators of her army but she does not possess the organization, says a writer in New York Sun. He believes that this is at hand in America and that Italy and the Capronis would desire nothing more than that the United States should furnish the organization and share in the laurels which will fall to those who first fly over the Atlantic. At the same time the lieutenant admits that America is well supplied with skill, too. As he puts it: “The flying youth of Italy and America would be proud to make the flight.” The organization, he says, should consist of ships stationed at Intervals along the line of flight to wireless the course to the pilots of the transatlantic machine and for precautionary measures. Other work necessary would be the gathering together of weather reports and data vital to the men who will rise in the air in one hemisphere and land in another. As to the type of airplane for the trip, Lieutenant Belloni favors a regulation Italian army Capronl. He has no preference for a triplane over a biplane, but he does believe that the machine should be speedy and should carry a small crew, Instead of a heavy and slower air cruiser capable of carrying several men. Would Like Liberty Motors. For engines he says emphatically that there is nothing that would suit the Capronl brothers better than that a plane of their making equipped with Liberty motors' should make the attempt, guided by an Italian-American crew. "Capronl would have it so,” said Lieutenant Belloni. “He loves America. He patterned himself after your famous Wright brothers,. and I know that there is nothing would give him greater pleasure than to have America share in the honors of an ocean flight.” Had Gianni Capronl, father of Italy’s huge bombing and fighting machines, which have given a good account of themselves on the Italian and French fronts, been asked if the flight across the sea were probable this year it is safe to say that he would have replied: “We will do it.” Capronl, who is just thirty-two, was born in the Trentlno, of Italian parents who hajl lived the greater part of their fives in the mountain hamlet of Masone, which numbered about 500 souls, under the yoke of Austrian rule. Despite the fact that they were forced-, to bow to the will, of the Hapsburg government, they remained Italians at heart and Instilled the love of the mother country into their younger son, who is now serving Italy so well. The home ties of the Capronl family held them under the despotism of a hated rulercsnnd they lived and dreamed of a day of repatriation. It was in this atmosphere that young

TAKEN FROM EXCHANGES

Following a representative conference at Kalamazoo, Mich., women offered their aid on state farms. The principle of the opaque post card projector has been utilized in a new machine for registering color printing plates on a printing press. A Parisian has invented roller skates propelled by a one-quarter horse power gasoline motor, the fuel tank being carried on the wearer’s belt.

Capron! received his early training. His elementary schooling was acquired in the small*and isolated institutions of the Trentlno. Even in these schools the boy’s love for mathematics was indicated aad appreciated, and when he had finished the courses presented his aged father and mother packed his few belongings, bestowed upon him their blessings and sent him north away from the Trentlno to the engineering college at Munich, Bavaria. Was Graduated When of Age. On his twenty-first birthday he was graduated from that Institution with the degree of civil engineer. It was about this time that the Wright brothers began to demonstrate to a skeptical world that man could fly In.a heav-ler-than-air machine. Their successes so fired the young Italian engineer with the dream of becoming a creator that he decided upon aviation as his life work. • Despite his racial impetuosity, he realized that a theoretical groundwork would be necessary, and Instead of joining the ranks of the exhibition fliers who Immediately sprang up in Europe he con-, tinued the business of prying truths from textbooks. * It was a hard pull, for the expense of a higher education along proper lines was far from small and the sums offered for exhibition flights were large. But young Capron! stuck it out, and traveling still further north and away from the Trentlno, he went to Liege and entered the Miraflori institute in that city. He applied himself to the more difficult courses in its curriculum; among them being that of electro-technics. This he Mastered, and immediately broadened the scope of his pilgrimage for knowledge to include Faris and the flying fields of the continent. e He was always an Irrepressible enthusiast on the future possibilities of the aii-plane, but usually tempered his advanced, and what In those days were radical, views with solid facts gleaned from his long preparation. In the earlier days of the French demonstration flying the young man from the Trentlno spent a great deal of his time talking with the men who were making exhibition flights and improving on the theories of the Wright brothers. He was always ready to discuss the future of the airplane and was frequently considered quite mad , when he talked of time and distance ■ annihilating machines capable of carrying as many as ten and twenty men. Not Daunted by Skepticism. But the skepticism of the earlier fliers, and many of them were painfully frank in their characterization of Caproni’s dream, did little to crush the spirit of the man who has since become the producer of heavier-than-atr machines which are larger and can do more than those he pictured in his own mind In the earlier days. When he had drawn a great mass of opinions, practical experiences and beliefs from the earlier birdmen of Europe he returned to the Trentlno, where he spent some time digesting them. Finally Capronl was ready to build his first machine. He enlisted the aid of ordinary Italian carpenters, and in a small shed not far from Arco began the construction of a machine. It grew under his direction, but it did not grow as fast as the suspicions of the Austrian police authorities. Capronl was watched and hindered in every possible manner. The police did not limit their aggression to the inventor, but extended it to his brother.

George H. Hughes of Denver, Colo., forty years old, enlisted In the National army at the first call of President Wilson for volunteers. Richard A. Hughes, eighteen, son of George H., with the consent of his father, enlisted a few days after the parent. Both were sent to Camp Kearney, Cal., where the son has become a sergeant of the company tn which the father is a corporal

This, of-course, could not continue, and Capronl* again packed up his belongings, again received the parental blessing and crossed the Austro-Italian frontier. He went to Milan, Italy, and applied to the military authorities there for permission to erect a hangar and experimental laboratories on the cavalry exercise field near Somma Lombardo. , Has Designed Nineteen Good Types. Here at last he was given the opportunity to build and test his first airplane, and it is to the credit of Capron! that this first machine was rolled from the hangar and flew on Its first trial. Others were turned out and still others,, arid to date nineteen types have been designed and built by this man, and in each instance have flown as soon as finished. ' The worth of these Capronl ma-' chines is proved by their adoption as standard bombing planes J>y the French government, the letting of contracts' to the Capronls by the United States government and the purchase of several of the big triplanes by the British government. Since the outbreak of the world war Caproni airplanes have taken all of the aviation records in Italy and have smashed many of the international figures. The Inventor has not confined his activities to any one, type, but has diversified his output. It is no uncommon sight on a Caproni field to see a gossamer winged monoplane roll out of a hangar door and under the lower plane of a giant Caproni triplane which has carried more than fifty men as passengers in a long nonstop flight. At the same time the honor of the first* tank airplane must go to Capronl. Some weeks ago news dispatches from the western front announced the use of the first aerial tank by Germany. The Caproni tank airplane had flown long beford that-announcement. The biggest of the Capronl machines recently completed in Italy carried more than fifty men. It so far eclipses any other effort along similar lines that approximate dimensions are of more than passing interest.

Carrie* Seven Gun*. This leviathan of the air has an approximate wing spread of 155 feet from tip to tip. is about 65 feet long and 33 feet high, is armed with seven guns and develops 2,100 horse power with three motors. This machine, of course, can carry an enormous freight of high explosives and drop them behind the enemy lines, and Italy would build many of them if she could. At present only one of these battle cruisers of the air, has been constructed. Italy cannot spare more raw material for the construction of others. But Italy is depending on- the United States for that raw material, and believes that she will get it. Caproni is no self-advertiser. In this he resembles his countrymen. When something has had to be done in a military way Italian military chiefs have done it without talking. When it was necessary for new and vital things to be done in the air over the Italian front Capronl- has done them. The words of a young Italian officer when asked why it was that Italy was not letting the world know what she was doing sum the situation up well. “Italy does not want to talk,” he said. “She wants to fight and to do.” And if the past performance of Gianni Caproni means anything, the Statement by his representative In this country that the continent to continent flight will be made may be accepted at face value.

A deserving working girl of Paris has.fallen heir to an annual income of SSOO which was enjoyed by a pet hprse of Adolph de Rothschild until Its recent death from old age. This was in accordance with the will of M. de Rothschild. . - ■ .' Five hundred sheep growers on the Minidoka reclamation ‘ project, Idaho, are consolidating their flocks into larger bands for summer grazing. Smail sheep growers realize the benefits of inexpensive summer grazing through this co-operation.

LIVE ALL TOO FAST

Many Constantly In a Fever of Movement One of Man's Greatest Mistakes Is to Allow Himself to Be Constantly Under Pressure and Intense Nervous Strain. Some of us are trying to live our lives all at once. We would cramp the slow development of years into the coming month or week; we would compress the work of an hour into the next five minutes. Nature —patient, tireless, cunning laborer that she is—does not favor this plan. She takes her time —“Because it is hersi” some one makes prompt answer. “She has command of all the’time there is. She, can be as deliberate as she chooses. We must make haste because our little lives are so soon clipped off. The darkness too early rounds our day. Our work must be put through with speed and under pressure or we shall not finish.” The best work even by these feeble . mortal hands and minds of ours is done not in a fever but in a calm. Art (and the exception proves the rule) achieves most nobly when it achieves with tranquility. The personal circumstances of the artist may be distressing. He rises above them. His dream translates him to the skies above his mundane' environment. His passion for the truth leads him to forget that he is poor and hungry and misunderstood. He writes his book or paints his picture or composes his sonata in a land where it Is always summer and the skies are blue and tears are never shed and none ever dies. By the force of a creative imagination, he establishes for himself 'a new Heaven and a new earth, and his spirit Is tranquil because it is triumphant over the pinching and gnawing circumstances. Artist or artisan, each of us must learn to make the pilgrimage a step at a time. Let not an anxious forecast corrugate the brow with the thought of a morrow sufficient unto Itself. Epicurean delight, lives for the moment; a man’s more serious purpose in existence wbuld often do well to follow the example. We can be sure as to what we wish to do with our lives; we can have a great and generous aim; we can appoint a goal and know the point we wish to reach and the why by which we are proceeding. But the miles we measure forward with the spiritual eye are not to be o’erleaped in the next second. We must plod. We must be content with a wayside inn tonight, and the next* night, and many nights, perhaps, before we reach our haven and our home. It will hot do to disparage this goodly earth as a vale of tears for all the sorrow and all the blackness that we see. The earth is full of fallible people like ourselves, trying and coming to grief and rising to give battle again in the inextinguishable hope of victory. We are more alike than we realize. We are a marching anriy, with leaders whom we must obey. Like good soldiers we must keep the cadence with the rest. If we grow careless and straggle, we dislocate the whole proceeding. We came' into this world bound to be submissive to its discipline. To defy the natural laws is only to be miserable and to make misery for others. If war shall teach us to respond with promptness to a command, out of its horrors will be born a blessing.—Philadelphia Public Ledger.

Jackies Ignore Styles.

Fashions may come and fashions may go, but the habiliments of Uncle Sam’s jackies never vary. Trained to face nature in the open, the jacky is invariably ready to meet all sorts of weather. He knows how to dress to meet every condition, and the navy not only has him sufficiently clad, but has more clothes in his sea bag and ready for use when > he ,needs them. His clothes are eternally blue, the pattern never changes and tradition still holds her own in their making. Decades ago when the “old tars”* had to climb a mast and dangle from the stretched-out ends of yardarms to do their reefing, conveniences and custom made necessary the bell-shaped lower ends of the trousers. And time has not changed them one iota. The sailor also clings to his black handkerchief, draped about his blue blouse and tied across his breast Tradition tells that the handkerchief thus worn originated with the British tar, for the blacks were once worn in this fashion as a mark of mourning for Lord Nelson. The custom endures.

Potash From Mill Dust.

Extraction of potash from the dust from cement manufacture is claimed as a possibility. James D. Rhodes, a Pittsburgh manufacturer, made the discovery, and at his own expense has arranged to erect a large experimental plant adjoining the plant of a cement company at Castalia, 0., for the purt pose of experimenting for 120 days. Mr. Rhodes said he could extract from the dust and waste of the cement mills large quantities Of potash for fertilizer that will be of great benefit to the country in increasing the supply.

Or He Might Move Here.

“This report claims that In some parts of Mexico it only rains once or twice a year.” “Please keep that report away from my husband. He’s so pigheaded that he’d go there Immediately and start an umbrella factory.”