Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 May 1918 — LETTER IN THE MORNING MAIL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LETTER IN THE MORNING MAIL

How Mrs. Lane Finally Realized That Thousands of Other Mothers’ Sons Are at War Scarred Battle Front By MAXIMILIAN FOSTER Of the Viflllantea. I Mathematics teach us that 1 from 1 leaves nothing, and there is also the well known biological theorem that you cannot get blood from a turnip. It is also assumed. Sir Isaac Newton having demonstrated the law, that what goes up is bound to come down, but this is only abstr|Ct Mrs. Lane probably would have denied IL The flat rent, previously $1,200 a year, now was $1,400, and It showed no signs whatever of coming down. The same condition applied also to her children's shoes. The shoes now cost $7, whereas they formerly had cost $4. But this was meftly a detail. A similar phenomenon occurred as to beefsteaks, potatoes, butter, fish and tho 57 other varieties of domestic essentials. All had gone up; none had come down. About the only thing stable In Mrs. Lane’s cosmoa was Mr. Lane's yearly income. This was $7,000 a year. Already Mrs. Lane had given np ope maid. The war literally was at her door. True, Mra. Lane had no son, no brother—no kin of any kind —in th© war, but the war still was at her door. Hard to Make Ends Meet, Give money for the war? What do you think she was doing, anyway! She was giving every cent she had, trying to make both ends meet in her household. It hurt, though. Mra. Lane was a kindly, warm hearted woman, and she would have liked to give, war was dreadful! It was so dreadful she’d stopped reading about it. But one must read letters. On» must do that when a friend takes the trouble to write them. The letter came in the morning maiL Mrs. Lane read it, then she read it again. Afterward she sat there absorbed, silent, rigid. The color had crept out of her face, and her breath came swiftly from between her parted lips. “I have just come back from the canteen,” it read. “Such an afternoon I A trainload of seriously wounded to be fed at once, which is trying, as one has to climb into all the carriages, one after the other. We with the men who are well enough to sit up and handle their cups, and those who are too ill even to lift their heads, of course, we have to lift and feed ourselves. Feeding the ones with bad face wounds are the hardest. 1 can stand ordinary wounds of blood, but when a man ought to have a nose and mouth and all he . has is—ugh!—it takes all your courage to get through a feeding. I managed to get a pint of milk and a beaten egg and some brandy down the throat of a boy of twenty who had no mouth left, and i. I had to clean it between every ' mouthful. He had had no food for ' fifteen hours and was so thirsty that he was nearly insane. 1 held N his head against me, and I gagged |! all the time, but 1 just kept think- ■ ing, ‘Suppose it was my boy who needed a drink and them was no one to give it to him.* fia I went i through with it, and he finally went to sleep. Oh, Martha, Martha Lane, we need everything—all you and . the rest can send!” If Lpwrence Had Gone to War. One o’clock struck. Mrs. Lane still sat with the letter clutched in her hand. “What’sfor dinner?” asked Hannah, the maid. Mrs. Lane hardly heard her. She was still sitting there when Olivia floundered in. Olivia was fourteen, the conscious age. “Mother," she said fretfully, “I can’t go to dancing school again in brown gloves when all the other girls have white ones." The plaint reminded Mrs. Lane that Lawrence at boarding school had written that morning about his socks. He had only two pairs of silk opes left “And, mother,” said Olivia, continuing— But what Olivia said Mrs. Lane didn’t bear. She bad dropped her head on the table and unaccountably was weeping. “Just suppose it was my boy—mine!” ahe was sobbing. “Why, mother!” ejaculated Olivia. She hurried toward her mother. “What is it mother? You’re acting just as though Lawrence had gone to war 1” Mrs. Lane looked up, the tears streaking down her face. “That’s just what is the matter with me! I should be acting as if Lawrence were there. And so should you I If Willie were like these, the boys there,** she pointed to the letter that had slipped from her lap to the floor —“if he were, like them, in need, dying, wanting eggs, milk, brandy, to keep him alive, would you be buying white gloves? And would we think what other people wear or how they live or whether we had only one servant now? If my boy was over there, if my son were—" But other women’s sons are over there. Mrs. Lane had at last realized this. The tears were rolling down her cheeks.