Michel Plaa Porte,
Mécanicien Escadrille, N. 124, Secteur 16.
Cover of a French Periodical
IV
FROM HIS FATHER
Memories of my younger son Norman are so tender and fragrant that his bereaved father may well feel some hesitation in recording them for publication lest they may seem to those who never enjoyed intimate relations with him to have been inspired by absorbing parental pride and affection rather than by less partial and disinterested judgment. If there may be any warrant for this impression it will be readily allowed that the sacrifice of this young life in a great cause and the commingled pride and sorrow occasioned by such a martyrdom furnish adequate occasion for the warmest eulogy. To know Norman well was to love him and admire his fine traits of mind, heart, and soul.
I hardly know when our real companionship began. When he was yet a little boy, just emerging from the nursery, Norman was wise and resourceful beyond his young years. He was always reading and he was persistently inquiring about things worth knowing. His youthful self-reliance is amusingly illustrated by an incident when he was but about eleven years of age. He asked for a private tutor to teach him Latin, and he felt so sure of the kind of an instructor he wanted that he took upon himself the somewhat responsible task of obtaining one without advice or assistance. Having found one willing to accept the position Norman at once proceeded to put him through a preliminary examination to test his professional capacity.
Norman Prince, Frederick Henry Prince, Jr., Frederick Henry Prince
Describing this incident the tutor writes: “Norman came to me for work in Latin when I had no reasonable hours at my disposal for him. At my recommendation he sought the services of another tutor, but he soon came back to me in considerable perturbation. With his quick, incisive, convincing sentences he described Mr. Smith’s inefficiency in Latin, and declared his complete despair of ever getting his tutor over six books of Virgil in two weeks. Not to be caught again by the self-assurance of a tutor, he asked, ‘Can you really read Virgil, Mr. Woodbury, and if so how fast can you read it?’ Determined to keep within the speed limit and not to disappoint him, I said, restrainedly, that I thought I might read ten lines a minute. His eyes glistened with expectancy, but with caution he inquired, ‘Really, Sir? May I time you, Sir?’ With my consent he pulled out a stop-watch, and finding I could slightly better my estimate, he won me over by his irresistible arts of persuasion to give him the hours from seven to eight in the morning and nine to ten in the evening. These were unseasonable hours for so young a lad, but he never failed to be ready for work at the beginning and at the close of the day until his task was completed. Through his vivacity and his cleverness and his unfailing good nature he became very popular with the dozen or more fellows who were tutoring with me that summer. Between him and me there developed a friendship which to me was a source of great enjoyment and has now become a treasured memory.”