“A father’s heart should not be deceived, even for a moment,” I fancy I hear some one say. Perhaps not, yet there was one unhappy man in that frantic throng of those who were seeking their beloved ones, whom I beheld, thrice in succession, identifying a strange child as his own. And that father had a heart of hearts, as I have occasion to know.
Lying beneath one of the tables lay the body of a beautiful little girl of about twelve years of age. Fair was she, with golden hair and cheeks still red. A doctor saw her lying there and paused, wondering to himself whether his brethren had worked quite long enough. She surely did not look as if she were dead.
As the doctor stood wondering thus, a group of young lads approached him from the other side of the table. One of them cried appealingly:
“Oh, doctor, won’t you please try once more to save that little girl. We know her, and know her folks, and it will kill them if she dies.”
Another physician who was passing by, overhearing said, “No use, old man. We worked over her for forty minutes before we gave her up,” and he hurried on to another table.
“Oh, but doctor,” said one of the boys appealingly, “I just saw her eyes quiver.”
“Yes,” said another, “and one of her fingers just moved.”
“Dear, optimistic little liars,” said the doctor afterward, “I just couldn’t stand it. I pulled the body off the pile on which it lay, put it on the table, and worked like a horse over it for thirty minutes. And when the poor little chest made a few pitifully gasping sounds under my efforts, the expression of joy and hope on the faces of those lads was wonderful to see.
“And when through sheer fatigue I at last gave up the self imposed task that I knew was hopeless at the beginning, one of the boys approached me and tearfully whispered, ‘Please, doctor, won’t you tell me your name? We want to see that you get paid for trying to save our little friend. You did just the best you could.’
“And,” said the doctor, “I couldn’t answer him as I would have done had he been grown up. The poor boy would not have understood. I just choked up and sputtered, ‘See you again, by and by, my boy, I’m in a hurry now.’