She sat in a chair when I entered the room,
With the thing in her hand,
And the look on her face had a light and a bloom
I could not understand.
Then she showed me the message and said,
With a sigh of respite,—
"My last boy is dead. I can sleep. I can sleep
Without dreaming to-night."
CHAPTER VI[ToC]
SURPRISES
When all the evidence is in—
When all the good—and all the sin—
The Impulses—without—within
Are catalogued—with reasons showing—
What great surprises will await
The small, the near-great and the great
Who thought they knew how things were going!
Stories crowd in upon me as I write. Let no one ever say that this is a dull world! It is anything but dull! It is a pitiful, heartbreaking world, full of injustice, misunderstandings, false standards, and selfishness, but it is never dull. Neither is it a lost world, for the darkest corners of it are illuminated here and there by heroic deeds and noble aspirations. Men who hilariously sold their vote and influence prior to 1914, who took every sharp turn within the law, and who shamelessly mocked at any ideals of citizenship, were among the first to put on the King's uniform and march out to die.
To-day I read in the "paper from home" that Private William Keel is "missing, believed killed"; and it took me back to the old days before the war when the late Private Keel was accustomed to hold up the little town. Mr. Keel was a sober man—except upon occasions. The occasions were not numerous, but they left an undying impression on his neighbors and fellow townsmen; for the late private had a way all his own. He was a big Welshman, so strong that he never knew how strong he was; and when he became obsessed with the desire to get drunk, no one could stop him. He had to have it out. At such times his one ambition was to ride a horse up the steps of the hotel, and then—George Washington-like—rise in his stirrups and deliver an impassioned address on what we owe to the Old Flag. If he were blocked or thwarted in this, he became dangerous and hard to manage, and sometimes it took a dozen men to remove him to the Police Station. When he found himself safely landed there, with a locked door and small, barred window between himself and liberty, his mood changed and the remainder of the night was spent in song, mostly of "A life on the ocean wave and a home on the rolling deep"; for he had been a sailor before he came land-seeking to western Canada.
After having "proved up" his land in southern Manitoba—the Wanderlust seized him and he went to South America, where no doubt he enlivened the proceedings for the natives, as he had for us while he lived among us.