The Next of Kin: Those who Wait and Wonder

Down through the ages, a picture has come of the woman who weepeth: Tears are her birthright, and sorrow and sadness her portion: Weeping endures for a night, and prolongeth its season Far in the day, with the will of God For a reason!
Such has the world long accepted, as fitting and real; Plentiful have been the causes of grief, without stinting; Patient and sad have the women accepted the ruling, Learning life's lessons, with hardly a word of complaint At the schooling.
But there's a limit to tears, even tears, and a new note is sounding: Hitherto they have wept without hope, never seeing an ending; Now hope has dawned in their poor lonely hearts, And a message they're sending Over the world to their sisters in weeping, a message is flashing, Flashing the brighter, for the skies are so dark And war thunders crashing! And this is the message the war-stricken women send out In their sorrow: Yesterday and to-day have gone wrong, But we still have to-morrow!





It was a bleak day in November, with a thick, gray sky, and a great, noisy, blustering wind that had a knack of facing you, no matter which way you were going; a wind that would be in ill-favor anywhere, but in northern Alberta, where the wind is not due to blow at all, it was what the really polite people call impossible. Those who were not so polite called it something quite different, but the meaning is the same.
There are districts, not so very far from us, where the wind blows so constantly that the people grow accustomed to it; they depend on it; some say they like it; and when by a rare chance it goes down for a few hours, they become nervous, panicky, and apprehensive, always listening, expecting something to happen. But we of the windless North, with our sunlit spaces, our quiet days and nights, grow peevish, petulant, and full of grouch when the wind blows. We will stand anything but that. We resent wind; it is not in the bond; we will have none of it!