By Selwyn Grattan
The empty vial—the odour of bitter almonds—and in the chair what had been a man.
On the desk this note:
“Farewell. From the day of our marriage I have known. I love you. I love my friend. Better that I should go and leave you two to find happiness than that I should stay and the three of us wear out wretched lives. Again farewell—and bless you.
“Robert.”
THE GRETCHEN PLAN
By William Johnston
“And Solomon had seven hundred wives,” read Pastor Brandt.
Gretchen Edeler sat up to listen. A new idea had come to her. A distressing state of affairs existed in the village of Eisen. There had gone to the war from the village over three hundred men. From the war there had returned fifty-one—only fifty-one—and there in Eisen were two hundred and eighty-one girls wanting husbands.
Of the fifty-one returned soldiers twenty had wives and families already. Two had married during the war, married the nurses they had had in the hospital. Hilda Sachs, the rich widow, had captured one. That left just twenty-eight men available for husbands—twenty-eight to two hundred and eighty-one girls.
Yet no marriages occurred. The men wished to marry as much as the girls, but how could a man decide with so many to pick from? Thus stood matters that Sunday morning.