But a single cloud now remained in the radiant sky of dreams—the thought of parting! Ten years of residence in so Arcadian a place as Myrtle Avenue, and in so American a town as Harvey, engender ties of affection not easily to be sundered. Then, too, the school children, how one grows to love them, especially when you have given them their first Sacraments, and even joined in wedlock their parents before them. Of course for the priest who, more perhaps than any other man, "has not here a lasting city," whose life is so largely lived for others, and whose "Holy Orders" so naturally merge with marching orders, the leave-taking should not have been so trying. Preferable as would have been
"No moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea,"
the parting that night with the people in the school hall, and again, the following morning at the depot, was keenly painful—a grief, however, every soldier was to know, and, therefore, bravely to be endured.
How sacred and memorable were the depot platforms of our beloved country in war time! Whether the long, smoke stenciled, trainshed of the Metropolis, or the unsheltered, two-inch planking sort, of the wayside junction; they saw more of real life, the Tragedy of tears and the Comedy of laughter, than any stage dedicated to Drama. There, life was most real and intense. The prosaic words "All Aboard" seemed to set in motion a final wave of feeling that surged beyond all barriers of the conventional—the last pressure of heart to heart and of hand to hand; the last response of voice to voice; the last sight of tear dimmed eye and vanishing form, as the train rumbled away beyond the curve, leaving a ribbon of black crepe draped on the horizon.
First impressions, we are told, are most lasting. Arrival at Camp Dodge, Iowa, the following morning and subsequent meeting with the officers and enlisted men of Base Hospital No. 11, made an impression so agreeable time itself seems merely to have hallowed it.
Association with the soldierly and gracious Colonel Macfarlain, the splendid Major Percy, the energetic Captain Flannery, together with Doctors Roth, Ashworth, Carter (the same T. A. Carter whose skill later saved the lives of poisoned Shirley and Edna Luikart), Lewis, Shroeder, and others, became at once an inspiration and pleasure. Most of these gentlemen had been associated with either St. Mary of Nazareth or Augustana Hospitals, Chicago; and had patriotically relinquished lucrative practices to serve their country in its need. Words cannot too highly praise, nor excess of appreciation be shown our gallant public-spirited doctors and corpsmen, who, whether here or overseas, made every sacrifice to build up and maintain the health of the largest Army and Navy of our history.
The personnel of enlisted men, too, with Base 11, was exceptionally superior, coming from some of the best families of the Middle West. Anderson, McCranahan and the two Tobins of the famous Paulist choir were there, and what wealth of vocal melody they represented! Talbot, Bunte, and Leo Durkin of Waukegan; Dunn, Farrell, Lewis, Talbot—these, and five hundred others like them, were the splendid fellows to whom I now fell heir.
Camp Dodge, like many another Cantonment, the War Department miraculously "raised" over night, was a vast school, pulsating with martial throb. Hundreds of the brain and brawn of the far-flung prairies were arriving daily, and being classified, drilled and seasoned into efficient soldiers.
U. S. Unit No. 2—Blessing of Unit's Colors at St. Stephen's.