To A Siamese Cat written by Michael Joseph, published in 1930

I shall walk in the sun above,

 whose golden light you loved.

 I shall sleep alone

 and, stirring, touch an empty place.

 I shall write uninterrupted.

( Would that your gentle paw could stir my moving pen just once again.)

 I shall see beauty,

 but none to match your living grace.

 I shall hear music,

 but none so sweet as the droning song

 with which you loved me.

 I shall fill my days,

 but I shall not, can not, forget.

 Sleep soft dear friend,

 for while I live you shall not die.

Michael Joseph

Forgive Me When I Whine, Red Foley

Today, upon a bus, 

I saw a girl with golden hair.

I envied her, she seemed so gay,

and wished I was as fair.

When suddenly she rose to leave, 

I saw her hobbled down the aisle.

She had one leg and wore a crutch.

And as she passed... a smile.

Oh God, forgive me when I whine.

I have 2 legs, the world is mine

I stopped to buy some candy. 

The lad who sold it had such charm.

I talked with him, he seemed so glad.

If I were late, it'd do no harm.

And as I left, he said to me, 

"I thank you, you've been so kind.

It's nice to talk with folks like you. 

You see," he said, "I'm blind."

Oh God, forgive me when I whine.

I have 2 eyes, the world is mine.

Later while walking down the street,

I saw a child with eyes of blue.

He stood and watched the others play.

He did not know what to do.

I stopped a moment and then I said,

"Why don't you join the others, dear?"

He looked ahead without a word.

And then I knew,

he couldn't hear.

Oh God, forgive me when I whine.

I have 2 ears, the world is mine.

With feet to take me where I'd go.

With eyes to see the sunset's glow.

With ears to hear what I'd know.

Oh God, forgive me when I whine.

Beneath the Faded Word By Peter Thomas.

"It sat out in the shearing shed for 30 years or more,
With cobwebs, dust and binder twine, and sheep dung on the floor.
An old and rusted Lockwood kept its secrets from my eyes,
A cabin trunk of leather, there since 1945.
I asked my dad, who owned it and what we kept it for,
He replied, “It’s Uncle Basil’s, that he brought back from the war.
So don’t you bloody touch it, or I’ll tan your bloody hide!”
But that only made me more intrigued to see what was inside.
I wondered at its mysteries and the secrets that it hid,
Beneath the faded word “Tobruk” stencilled on the lid.
Near Wilcannia, where only hardy cattlemen will go,
Uncle Basil had a station, Baden Park, near Ivanhoe.
A strong and gentle man, who once rode the Birdsville Track
Just to prove he wasn’t hampered by the shrapnel in his back.
So I stood alone and weighed it up; which would I decide,
Should I leave the memories undisturbed, or take a look inside?
I knew I had to take a look to see what it’d hold.
Medals? Spoils from the war – silver, jewels or gold?
The old man went off fishin’ of a Sunday with Bob Gray,
So if I was gonna do it – that would have to be the day.
I started out determined – I was done by ten past two.
With half a broken hacksaw blade, I cut the padlock through,
But even as I opened it, the truth was plain and clear,
The old trunk held no gold or jewels, there was no treasure here .
A pile of letters tied with string, an old moth eaten flag,
A rusty metal helmet and mouldy webbing bag,
A cup made from a jam tin, an emu feathered hat,
And a newspaper clipping with the title “Desert Rat”,
Some photos of the pyramids – a rusty bayonet,
An IOU – Jack Carmody – two quid ( a two-up bet).
I folded out a faded map as the day began to wane,
Foreign places like Benghazi, Tobruk, El Alamein.
Then I came upon a satchel and a little leather book
And a photo of some young blokes – so I took a closer look.
It was 20 young recruits, their faces tanned and worn
From places like Cohuna, Moama and Bamawm.
Farmers, shearers, stockmen off to fight a noble war,
For the empire in a foreign land they’d never seen before.
And scrawled across the bottom, in writing rough and coarse,
Twenty names below the words, the Echuca Boys – Light Horse.
I turned the photo over, and there upon the back
Were words that sent a chill through me, and made my mouth go slack.
A solemn list of 20 – the fate of each the same.
Every one but Uncle Basil had a date beside their name,
Some said April ’43, some said June /July.
A record from our history, the date that each had died.
I turned back to the photo and looked in every face,
And written over each one was a month, a year, a place.
A grinning, sun-bronzed soldier’s face, each now with a name
Like November 1943 – the words El Alamein.
I wonder did they think, as they sailed across the foam,
That amongst them only one – Uncle Basil – would come home?
Recorded in that little book – I remember to this day –
A record of their actions and how each had passed away,
A mortar shell out on patrol; a sniper in the night;
A landmine took one’s legs off – he died before first light
. The death of each was brutal, the reality was stark.
Forty pages written there, I finished just on dark.
I slowly closed that record of the men who kept us free
And turned to see my father, standing silently.
He didn’t do his block as I expected that he would,
He just said, “Come on pack it up, I reckon that we should.”
So with loving care we packed away the treasures from the past,
When I came upon the photograph – it was put aside ‘till last –
And with new respect and love, I recorded there his fate.
Next to Uncle Basil I wrote April ’68.
Yeah, Dad and I we packed it up and put it back again
And wrapped it in a bit of tarp, to keep it from the rain.
We never spoke about it or discussed what I had read.
I reckon that was his way, to respect those men long dead.
There’s a statue of a digger in most every country town,
And a list of names of locals, who fought with great renown.
And now, when I go by, I remember what I read,
Sitting on the floor out there, in our old shearing shed.
And I think of Uncle Gordon, lost somewhere on Ambon,
Uncle Jack on the Kokoda and, in England, Uncle John.
I remember still that photo, with sadness and remorse,
That mob of grinning faces, the Echuca Boys – Light Horse.
In a cemetery near Ivanhoe lies a bloke who’s left his mark,
Basil Thomas, of Echuca, Tobruk and Baden park."

Found on https://www.facebook.com/rainfidel/photos/a.694536953941245.1073741831.693736330687974/951362461592025/?type=1

The Dukite Snake

Well, mate, you’ve asked about a fellow

You met today, in a black-and-yellow
Chain-gang suit, with a peddler’s pack,
Or with some such burden, strapped to his back.
Did you meet him square? No, passed you by?
Well, if you had, and had looked in his eye,
You’d have felt for your irons then and there;
For the light in his eye is a madman’s glare.
Ay, mad, poor fellow! I know him well,
And if you’re not sleepy just yet, I’ll tell
His story, a strange one as ever you heard
Or read; but I’ll vouch for it, every word.

You just wait a minute, mate: I must see
How that damper’s doing, and make some tea.
You smoke? That’s good; for there’s plenty of weed
In that wallaby skin. Does your horse feed
In the hobbles? Well, he’s got good feed here,
And my own old bush mare won’t interfere.
Done with that meat? Throw it there to the dogs,
And fling on a couple of banksia logs.

And now for the story.

 That man who goes
Through the bush with the pack and the convict’s clothes
Has been mad for years; but he does no harm,
And our lonely settlers feel no alarm
When they see or meet him. Poor Dave Sloane
Was a settler once, and a friend of my own.
Some eight years back, in the spring of the year,
Dave came from Scotland, and settled here.
A splendid young fellow he was just then,
And one of the bravest and truest men
That I ever met: he was kind as a woman
To all who needed a friend, and no man—
Not even a convict—met with his scorn,
For David Sloane was a gentleman born.
Ay, friend, a gentleman, though it sounds queer:
There’s plenty of blue blood flowing out here,
And some younger sons of your “upper ten”
Can be met with here, first-rate bushmen.
Why, friend, I—Bah! curse that dog! you see
This talking so much has affected me.

Well, Sloane came here with an axe and a gun;
He bought four miles of a sandal-wood run.
This bush at that time was a lonesome place,
So lonesome the sight of a white man’s face
Was a blessing, unless it came at night,
And peered in your hut, with the cunning fright
Of a runaway convict; and even they
Were welcome, for talk’s sake, while they could stay.

Dave lived with me here for a while, and learned
The tricks of the bush, how the snare was laid
In the wallaby track, how traps were made,
How ’possums and kangaroo rats were killed,
And when that was learned, I helped him to build
From mahogany slabs a good bush hut,
And showed him how sandal-wood logs were cut.
I lived up there with him days and days,
For I loved the lad for his honest ways.

I had only one fault to find: at first
Dave worked too hard; for a lad who was nursed,
As he was, in idleness, it was strange
How he cleared that sandal-wood off his range.
From the morning light till the light expired
He was always working, he never tired;
Till at length I began to think his will
Was too much settled on wealth, and still
When I looked at the lad’s brown face, and eye
Clear open, my heart gave such thought the lie.
But one day—for he read my mind—he laid
His hand on my shoulder: “Don’t be afraid,”
Said he, “that I’m seeking alone for pelf.
I work hard, friend; but ’tis not for myself.”

And he told me then, in his quiet tone,
Of a girl in Scotland, who was his own,
His wife,—’twas for her: ’twas all he could say,
And his clear eye brimmed as he turned away.
After that he told me the simple tale:
They had married for love, and she was to sail
For Australia when he wrote home and told
The oft-watched-for story of finding gold.

In a year he wrote, and his news was good:
He had bought some cattle and sold his wood.
He said, “Darling, I’ve only a hut, but come.”
Friend, a husband’s heart is a true wife’s home;
And he knew she’d come. Then he turned his hand
To make neat the house, and prepare the land
For his crops and vines; and he made that place
Put on such a smiling and homelike face,
That when she came, and he showed her round
His sandal-wood and his crops in the ground,
And spoke of the future, they cried for joy,
The husband’s arm clasping his wife and boy.

Well, friend, if a little of heaven’s best bliss
Ever comes from the upper world to this,
It came into that manly bushman’s life,
And circled him round with the arms of his wife.
God bless that bright memory! Even to me,
A rough, lonely man, did she seem to be,
While living, an angel of God’s pure love,
And now I could pray to her face above.
And David he loved her as only a man
With a heart as large as was his heart can.
I wondered how they could have lived apart,
For he was her idol, and she his heart.

Friend, there isn’t much more of the tale to tell:
I was talking of angels awhile since. Well,
Now I’ll change to a devil,—ay, to a devil!
You needn’t start: if a spirit of evil
Ever came to this world its hate to slake
One mankind, it came as a Dukite Snake.

Like? Like the pictures you’ve seen of Sin,
A long red snake, as if what was within
Was fire that gleamed through his glistening skin.
And his eyes!—if you could go down to hell
And come back to your fellows here and tell
What the fire was like, you could find no thing,
Here below on the earth, or up in the sky,
To compare it to but a Dukite’s eye!

Now, mark you, these Dukites don’t go alone:
There’s another near when you see but one;
And beware you of killing that one you see
Without finding the other; for you may be
More than twenty miles from the spot that night,
When camped, but you’re tracked by the lone Dukite,
That will follow your trail like Death or Fate,
And kill you as sure as you killed its mate!

Well, poor Dave Sloane had his young wife here
Three months,—’twas just this time of the year.
He had teamed some sandal-wood to the Vasse,
And was homeward bound, when he saw in the grass
A long red snake: he had never been told
Of the Dukite’s ways,—he jumped to the road,
And smashed its flat head with the bullock-goad!

He was proud of the red skin, so he tied
Its tail to the cart, and the snake’s blood dyed
The bush on the path he followed that night.
He was early home, and the dead Dukite
Was flung at the door to be skinned next day.
At sunrise next morning he started away
To hunt up his cattle. A three hours’ ride
Brought him back: he gazed on his home with pride
And joy in his heart; he jumped from his horse
And entered—to look on his young wife’s corse,
And his dead child clutching his mother’s clothes
As in fright; and there, as he gazed, arose
From her breast, where ’twas resting, the gleaming head
Of the terrible Dukite, as if it said,
“I’ve had vengeance, my foe: you took all I had.”

And so had the snake—David Sloane was mad!
I rode to his hut just by chance that night,
And there on the threshold the clear moonlight
Showed the two snakes dead. I pushed in the door
With an awful feeling of coming woe:
The dead was stretched on the moonlit floor,
The man held the hand of his wife,—his pride,
His poor life’s treasure,—and crouched by her side.
O God! I sank with the weight of the blow.

I touched and called him: he heeded me not,
So I dug her grave in a quiet spot,
And lifted them both,—her boy on her breast,—
And laid them down in the shade to rest.
Then I tried to take my poor friend away,
But he cried so woefully, “Let me stay
Till she comes again!” that I had no heart
To try to persuade him then to part
From all that was left to him here,—her grave;
So I stayed by his side that night, and, save
One heart-cutting cry, he uttered no sound,—
O God! that wail—like the wail of a hound!

’Tis six long years since I heard that cry,
But ’twill ring in my ears till the day I die.
Since that fearful night no one has heard
Poor David Sloane utter sound or word.
You have seen to-day how he always goes:
He’s been given that suit of convict’s clothes
By some prison officer. On his back
You noticed a load like a peddler’s pack?
Well, that’s what he lives for: when reason went,
Still memory lived, for the days are spent
In searching for Dukites; and year by year
That bundle of skins is growing. ’Tis clear
That the Lord out of evil some good still takes;
For he’s clearing this bush of the Dukite snakes.

When Brownie Died

He was only a dog-and not a pedigreed dog, at that. Reckoned in dollars and cents, the loss occasioned by his death was inconsiderable. But he was a friendly dog, on speaking and romping terms with every child in the neighborhood, and to the tender heart of childhood his death was something akin to a calamity. At noon one day he darted in front of my car and both wheels passed over his body.

His front legs were broken, but by using his hind legs and his nose, he half dragged, half jerked his shattered frame to the parking, where he stretched out to die. School had just dismissed, and in a very short time a solemn circle of children formed about him. I shall never forget the picture; the noon-day sun shining down upon a mangled dog; the circle of sorrowing children who had romped with him but a few hours before, and who loved him as only children can love a canine friend; one of the little lads with his hat removed-an unconscious recognition of the presence of death; quivering lips and moistened eyes all about; truly, a tragedy of childhood.
 He was only a dog-but he loved the children, and his last act was to raise his head, gaze at the circle of pitying eyes, wag his tail as a token of friendship-and then the light went out. He was only a dog-but the grief of that group of children was inexpressible, and, though it was no fault of mine, I felt strangely like a criminal who had robbed childhood of one of its dearest possessions. Through her tears, my dark.eyed girl asked me to write something about "Brownie." It was my car that killed him. It shall be my pen to sing his requiem.

 No dog was he of pedigree-but when his mangled frame lay stretched beneath the noonday sun, the little children came And formed a silent circle 'round the spot where "Brownie's" breath was coming in convulsive gasps-the agony of death. And when the end approached, he raised his head from off the ground And turned a loving eye upon his playmates gathered 'round, And bade them all a mute farewell, and bravely, feebly tried to wag his friendly tail-and it was thus that "Brownie" died.

 No dog was he of pedigree-but when he lifeless lay, the silent band of children there dispersed and walked away. With bitter tears and heaving sobs, and sad, dejected air, and the glory of the noonday sun seemed clouded everywhere. And when the word went swiftly forth that "Brownie" met his end.

From blocks around the kiddies came to see their faithful friend, and gazed awhile in silent awe, and mutely turned aside to hide the covert tears that flowed the day that "Brownie" died. No dog was he of pedigree-but figures of the mart can not compute or value the affections of the heart; And some will say there's one dog less to clutter up the street, and just a dollar lopped from off the next year's tax receipt; but the loss to happy childhood, in whose heart he was enshrined ... is something that can never be computed or defined, and the measure of their grief was such that furtively, a tear that welled up from my heart the day that "Brownie" died.

No dog was he of pedigree-and theologians say the soul of him will not survive to greet the Judgment Day; But little children loved him, and his mission here on earth was to make the children happy-and he thereby proved his worth. And despite my churchly teachings, something whispers , that if children go to heaven, faithful dogs will go there too, and abiding love assures me that a soul all true and tried went to romp with heaven's children on the day that "Brownie" died!

-Phil Carspecken

Guilty Or Not Guilty

She stood at the bar of justice,
A creature wan and wild;
In form, too small for a woman,
In features, too old for a child,
For a look, so worn, and pathetic,
Was stamped on her pale young face,
It seemed long years of suffering,
Must have left that silent trace.

"Your name," said the Judge, as he eyed her,
With a kindly look, yet keen,
"Is Mary McGuire, if you please, sir."
"And your age?" "I'm turned fifteen."
"Well, Mary," and from a paper he slowly and gravely read.
"Y ou are charged here, I am sorry to say it,
With stealing three loaves of bread.
You don't look like an old offender,
And I hope that you can show
The charge is false- Now tell me
Are you guilty of this or no?"

A passionate burst of weeping was,
at first, her sole reply,
But she dried her tears in a moment
and looked in the judge's eye.
"I will tell you just how it was, sir,
My father and mother are dead,
and my little brothers and sisters were hungry,
and asked me for bread.

At first I earned it for them,
by working hard all day,
But somehow the times grew hard, sir,
and work all fell away.
I could get no more employment,
the weather was bitter cold,
The little ones cried and shivered,
Little Johnnie's but four years old.

So what was I to do, sir,
I am guilty, but do not condemn,
I took, (O God was it stealing)
the bread to give to them.
one so learned in such matters,
so wise in dealing with men,
seemed on a simple sentence,
sorely puzzled just then.

Everyone in the courtroom,
grey-bearded and thoughtless youth,
Knew as they looked upon her,
that the prisoner spoke the truth.
Out from their pockets came handkerchiefs,
out from their eyes came tears,
And out from old, faded wallets,
treasures hoarded for years.

The judge's face was a study,
the strangest ever you saw,
As he cleared his throat and murmured
something about the law.
For one so learned in such matters,

 So wise in dealing with men,

 He seemed on a simple question 

Sorely puzzled just then. 

But no one blamed him, or wondered, 

When at last these words they heard, 

"The sentence of this young prisoner 

Is for the present deferred." 

And no one blamed him, or wondered, 

When he went to her and smiled, 

And tenderly led from the court-room, 

Himself, the "guilty" child.

-Anonymous

Was Merely Whisperin' Bill

So you're takin' the census, mister?
There's three of us livin' still,
My wife and I, an' our only son,
that folks call Whisperin' Bill;
But Bill couldn't tell ye his name, sir,
an' so it's hardly worth givin' ,
For ye see a bullet killed his mind,
an' left his body livin'.

Set down for a minute, mister;
ye see Bill was only fifteen
At the time O' the war,
an' as likely a boy as ever this world has seen;
An' what with the news of battles lost,
the speeches an' all the noise,
I guess every farm in the neighborhood
lost a part of its crop O' boys.

'Twas the harvest time when Bill left home;
every stalk in the fields of rye
Seemed to stand tip-top to see him off
an' wave a fond good-bye;
His sweetheart was here with some other girls
-the sassy little miss!
An' pretendin' she wanted to whisper
in his ear, she gave him a rousin' kiss.

Oh, he was a handsome feller,
an' tender an' brave an' smart.

An' tho' he was bigger than I was,
the boy had a woman's heart.

I couldn't control my feelin's,
but I tried with all my might.

An' his mother an' me stood a-cryin'
till Bill was out o' sight.

His mother she often told him
 when she knew he was goin' away,

That God would take care o' him,
 maybe, if he didn't forgit to pray;

An' on the bloodiest battle-fields,
when bullets whizzed in the air

An' Bill was a-fightin' desperit,
 he used to whisper a prayer.

Oh, his comrades has often told me
that Bill never flinched a bit,

When every second a gap in the ranks
 told where a ball had hit.

An' one night when the field was covered
 with the awful harvest o' war.

They found my boy 'mongst the martyrs
 o' the cause he was fightin' for.

His fingers were clutched in the dewy grass
 — oh, no, sir, he wasn't dead,

But he lay sort of helpless an' crazy
 with a rifle-ball in his head ;

An' if Bill had really died that night
 I'd give all I've got worth givin';

For ye see the bullet had killed his mind
 an' left his body livin'.

An officer wrote an' told us how
 the boy had been hurt in the fight,

But he said that the doctors reckoned
 they could bring him round all right,

An' then we heard from a neighbor,
 dis- abled at Malvern Hill,

That he thought in the course of a week or so
he'd be comin' home with Bill.

We was that anxious t' see him
we'd set up an' talk o' nights

Till the break o' day had dimmed the stars

an' put out the northern lights;

We waited an' watched for a month or more,
an' the Summer was nearly past.

When a letter came one day that said
 they'd started for home at last.

I'll never forgit the day Bill came
 'twas harvest-time again

An' the air-bloom over the yellow fields
 was sweet with the scent o' the grain;

The door-yard was full o' the neighbors,
 who had come to share our joy,

An' all of us sent up a mighty cheer
 at the sight o' that soldier boy.

An' all of a sudden somebody said:
"My God! don't the boy know his mother?"

An' Bill stood a-whisperin', fearful like,
 an' starin' from one to another:

"Don't be afraid. Bill," said he to himself,
 as he stood in his coat o' blue,

"Why, God'll take care o' you, Bill;
 God'll take care o' you."

He seemed to be loadin' an' firin' a gun,

an' to act like a man who hears
 The awful roar o' the battle-field
a-soundin' in his ears;

I saw that the bullet had touched his brain
 an' somehow made it blind,

With the picture o' war before his eyes
 an' the fear o' death in his mind.

I grasped his hand, an' says I to Bill,
 "Don't ye remember me?

I'm yer father — don't ye know me?
 How frightened ye seem to be!"

But the boy kep' a-whisperin' to himself,
 as if 'twas all he knew,

"God'll take care o' you, Bill;
God'll take care o' you."

He's never known us since that day,

nor his sweetheart, an' never will:

Father an' mother an' sweetheart-
 are all the same to Bill.

An' many's the time his mother

 sets up the whole night through,

An' smooths his head, and says:
"Yes, Bill, God'll take care o' you."

Unfortunit? Yes, but we can't complain.

It's a livin' death more sad
 When the body chngs to a life o' shame
 an' the soul has gone to the bad;

An' Bill is out o' the reach
o'' harm an' danger of every kind.

We only take care of his body,
 but God takes care of his mind.

Forever

I never knew exactly what it meant
To say forever and forever while
You lived, but now I know- now since you went
From me. Forever is mile after mile
Of space, impassable, uncharted: it
Is time beyond the count and scope of mind;
A rack on which all tortured souls submit;
A prison with sealed doors; steel chains that bind.
Forever is from when you died until
I go. Forever is the thing graves know.
Forever is the life, the years, you will
Not live. Forever is a word for woe.
I say forever and forever and
There are no words I better understand.

FRANCES WHITE

Mary White

The Associated Press reports carrying the news of Mary White's death declared that it came as the result of a fall from a horse. How she would have hooted at that! She never fell from a horse in her life. Horses have fallen on her and with her. "I'm always trying to hold 'em in my lap," she used to say. But she was proud of few things, and one was that she could ride anything that had four legs and hair. Her death resulted not from a fall, but from a blow on the head which fractured her skull, and the blow came from the limb of an overhanging tree on the parking.

The last hour of her life was typical of its happiness. She came home from a day's work at school, topped off by a hard grind with the copy on the High School Annual, and felt that a ride would refresh her. She climbed into her khakis, chattering to her mother about the work she was doing, and hurried to get her horse and be out on the dirt roads for the country air and the radiant green fields of the spring. As she rode through the town on an easy gallop, she kept waving at passers-by. She knew everyone in town. For a decade the little figure with the long pig-tail and the red hair-ribbon has been familiar on the streets of Emporia, and she got in the way of speaking to those who nodded at her.

She passed the Kerrs-walking the horse-in front of the Normal Library, and waved at them; passed another friend a few hundred feet further on, and waved at her. The horse was walking and, as she turned into North Merchant Street, she took off her cowboy hat, and the horse swung into a lope. She passed the Tripletts and waved her cowboy hat at them, still moving gayly north on Merchant Street. A Gazette carrier passed- a High School boy friend- and she waved at him, but with her bridle hand; the horse veered quickly, plunged into the parking where the low-hanging limb faced her, and, while she still looked back waving, the blow came. But she did not fall from the horse; she slipped off, dazed a bit, staggered, and fell in a faint. She never quite recovered consciousness.

But she did not fall from the horse, neither was she riding fast. A year or so ago she used to go like the wind. But that habit was broken, and she used the horse to get into the open to get fresh, hard exercise and to work off a certain surplus energy that welled up in her and needed a physical outlet. That need has been in her heart for years. It was back of the impulse that kept the dauntless little brownclad figure on the streets and country roads of this community and built into a strong, muscular body what had been a frail and sickly frame during the first years of her life. But the riding gave her more than a body. It released a gay and hardy soul. She was the happiest thing in the world. And she was happy because she was enlarging her horizon.

She came to know all sorts and conditions of men; Charley O'Brien, the traffic cop, was one of her best friends. W. L. Holtz, the Latin teacher, was another. Tom O'Connor, farmer-politician, and Rev. J. H. J. Rice, preacher and police judge, and Frank Beach, music master, were her special friends, and all the girls, black and white, above the track and below the track, in Pepville and Stringtown, were among her acquaintances. And she brought home riotous stories of her adventures. She loved to rollick; persiflage was her natural expression at home. Her humor was a continual bubble of joy. She seemed to think in hyperbole and metaphor. She was mischievous without malice, and full of faults as an old shoe. No angel was Mary White, but an easy girl to live with, for she never nursed a grouch five minutes in her life.

With all her eagerness for the out-of-doors, she loved books. On her table when she left her room, were a book by Conrad, one by Galsworthy, Creative Chemistry, by E. E. Slosson, and Kipling book. She read Mark Twain, Dickens, and Kipling before she was ten- all of their writings. Wells and Arnold Bennett particularly amused and diverted her. She was entered as a student in Wellesley in 1922; was assistant editor of the High School Annual this year, and in line for election to the editorship of the Annual next year.

She was a member of the executive committee of the High School Y.W.C.A. Within the last two years she had begun to be moved by an ambition to draw. She began as most children do by scribbling in her schoolbooks, funny pictures. She bought cartoon magazines and a took a course rather casually, naturally; for she was, after all, a child with no strong purposes- and this year she tasted the first fruits of success by having her pictures accepted by the High School Annual.

But the thrill of delight she got when Mr. Ecord, of the Normal Annual, asked her to do the cartooning for that book this spring was too beautiful for words. She fell to her work with all her enthusiastic heart. Her drawings were accepted, and her pride- always repressed by a lively sense of the ridiculousness of the figure she was cutting- was a really gorgeous thing to see. No successful artist ever drank a deeper draft of satisfaction than she took from the little fame her work was getting among her schoolfellows. In her glory she almost forgot her horse- but never her car.

For she used the car as a jitney bus, it was her social life. She never had a "party" in all her nearly seventeen years, wouldn't have one, but she never drove a block in the car in her life that she didn't begin to fill the car with pick-ups!

Everybody rode with Mary White-white and black, old and young, rich and poor, men and women. She liked nothing better than to fill the car full of long-legged High School boys and an occasional girl, and parade the town. She never had a "date," nor went to a dance, except once with her brother Bill, and the "boy proposition" didn't interest her yet. But young people, great spring-breaking, varnish cracking, fender-bending, door-sagging carloads of  "kids," gave her great pleasure.

Her zests were keen. But the most fun she ever had in her life was acting as chairman of the committee that got up the big turkey dinner for the poor folks at the county home; scores pf pies, gallons of slaw, jam, cakes, preserves, oranges, and a wilderness of turkey were loaded in the car and taken to the county home. And, being of a practical turn of mind, she risked her own Christmas dinner by staying to see that the poor folks actually got it all. Not that she was a cynic; she just disliked to tempt folks. While there she found a blind colored uncle, very old, who could do nothing but make rag rugs, and she rustled up from her school friends rags enough to keep him busy for a season.

The last engagement she tried to make was to take the guests at the county home out for a car ride. And the last endeavor of her life was to try to get a rest room for colored girls in the High School. She found one girl reading in the toilet, because there was no better place for a colored girl to loaf, and it inflamed her sense of injustice, and she became a nagging harpie to those who, she thought, could remedy the evil. The poor she had always with her, and was glad of it. She hungered and thirsted for righteousness; and was the most impious creature in the world. She joined the Congregational Church without consulting her parents; not particularly for her soul's good. She never had a thrill of piety in her life, and would have hooted at "testi¬mony." But even as a little child she felt the church was an agency for helping people to more of life's abundance, and she wanted to help.

She never wanted help for herself. Clothes meant little to her. It was a fight to get a new ring on her; but eventually a harder fight to get it off. She never wore a jewel and had no ring but her High School class ring, and never asked for anything but a wrist watch. She refused to have her hair up, though she was nearly seventeen. "Mother," she protested, "you don't know how much I get by with, in my braided pigtails, that I could not with my hair up." Above every other passion of her life was her passion not to grow up, to be a child. The tomboy in her, which was big, seemed to loathe to be put away forever in skirts. She was a Peter Pan, who refused to grow up.

Her funeral yesterday at the Congregational Church was as she would have wished it; no singing, no flowers save the big bunch of red roses from her brother Bill's Harvard classmen - heavens, how proud that would have made her- and the red roses from the Gazette force in vases at her head and feet. A short prayer, Paul's beautiful essay on "Love" from the Thirteenth Chapter of First Corinthians, some remarks about her democratic spirit by her friend, John H. J. Rice, pastor and police judge, which she would have deprecated if she could, a prayer sent down for her by her friend, Carl Nau, and opening the service the slow, poignant movement from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, which she loved, and closing the service a cutting from the joyously melancholy first movement of Tschaikowski's Pathetic Symphony, which she liked to hear in certain moods on the phonograph; then the Lord's Prayer by her friends in the High School. That was all.

For her pall-bearers only her friends were chosen; her Latin teacher, W. L. Holtz; her High School principal, Rice Brown; her doctor, Frank Fonconnon; her friend, W. W. Finney; her pal at the Gazette office, Walter Hughes; and her brother Bill. It would have made her smile to know that her friend Charley O'Brien, the traffic cop, had been transferred from Sixth and Commercial to the corner near the church to direct her friends who came to bid her good-by.

A rift in the clouds in a gray day threw a shaft of sunlight upon her coffin as her nervous energetic little body sank to its last sleep. But the soul of her, the glowing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, surely was flaming in eager joy upon some other dawn.

WILLIAM ALLEN WRITE

At Sunrise

They pushed him straight against the wall;
The firing squad dropped in a row,
And why he raised upon his toes,
Those men shall never know.
He wore a smile across his face
As he stood trimly there,
The guns all aiming at his heart,
The sun upon his hair.
For he remembered in a flash
Those days now past recall,
When his proud mother took his height
Against the bedroom wall.

ROSA ZAGNONI MARINONI.

New Song For Memorial Day

We are the dead, who are not laid away,
For whom no flowers deck the quiet grave.
You passed us in the crowded street today;
Thinking of those gone back to earth, you gave
No second glance. We are the dead, who died
Not with one kind abandonment of breath,
Sudden and merciful; but dreams denied
And slow frustration worked a living death.
You will lay blossoms on a sunny slope
For those called dead, who cannot need them now;
And we shall take the subway with you, grope
Ever so slightly for your thought; then bow
The head again, and face the empty years
Dead without grace of tribute, or of tears.

HELEN FRAZEE-BoWER.

Circus Day

"He promised me
Whatever happened,
We would go, we three."
She said.

And facing blue reproachful eyes,
I prayed-
"Dear God, help me to keep
The promise that he made."

Why had it come today?
Bright gilded wagons, elephants and clowns,
A circus band that loudly played,
Passing a new clay mound, rose-strewn.

"Dear God, you'll make him understand
Just that I kept his promise, and saved
Her happiness; and he will know how great her love
That planted blue and yellow toy balloons upon his grave."

ANNA BOONE ROBERTSON.

Lesson

Have you seen anywhere a tall little lad
And a wee, winsome lass of four?
It was only today, barefooted and brown,
That they played by my kitchen door.
It was only today (or maybe a year:
It could not be twenty, I know),
They were shouting for me to help in their game
But I was too busy to go.
Too busy with sweeping and dusting to play,
And now they have silently wandered away.
Perchance you should hear of a slim little lad
And a small winsome lass of four,
I pray you to tell me; to find them again
I would journey the wide world o'er.
Somewhere, I am sure, they'll be playing a game,
And should they be calling for me
To come out and help, oh, tell them, I beg,
I'm coming as fast as can be.
For it's never a house would hold me today
Could I hear them call me to share in their play!

MINNIE CASE HOPKINS.

Absense

I do not think of you so very much.
And that is odd-I was so sure I'd miss
Your tall, clean strength, and gay eyes, laughter filled,
Your arms, close holding, and your eager kiss.
I do not want you as I thought I would.
The curtain dropped so softly on the play
That I forget unless I tell myself
That we are through-and you have gone away.
But now and then in some familiar place,
Or when someone says small words strangely dear
Because of you, I sense a sudden hurt,
And for a minute want you- want you near.

HELEN WELSHIMER.

Friend of the Bride

"Friend of the bride
Or friend of the groom?"
I, who had once been his wife.
Who remembered the glint
In his eyes when he smiled;
Firm set of his chin,
Wide sweep of his brow.
The touch of his hand over mine
And the funny old ties that he wore.
"Friend of the bride
Or friend of the
"Friend of the bride," I replied,
And followed the usher down the aisle.

DOROTHA GRAY.

Walk In The Night

In this mysterious, spangled dusk,
Why am I walking alone?
Oh, lady with the bird's wing on your hat!
Please, won't you wait?
Then, will you? Man with the tobacco crop in your mouth!
Or you, child on the throbbing motorcycle?
Oh, please, won't you stop for a little while?
Won't somebody, anybody, somebody stop?
I want to talk to you. Don't be afraid. . .
Please; don't be afraid of me!
You, please. . . why are you hurrying so?
You are running... into the dark embrace of forgetfulness?
The black cage of the movies will hide you from yourself for a moment.
You are running. . . into the warm embrace of busy-ness?
The gaudy dinner will fill your soul for a moment.
Oh, do wait! Here... now. . . on this dim corner. . .
An apple will feed your family.
A crisp juicy apple will nourish a body!
An apple that never gave birth to the worm in your hearts;
The worm that grows on this hurrying, one beyond the other. . .
Grows more quickly than any worm in any apple!
They say we can cure cancer,
If we are careful, if we catch it early.
. . Catch it early?
But it is so late now!
Perhaps there is a chance?
Wait, please. . .
maybe you and I can cure this cancer together.
Perhaps it is still Just early enough
and the moon is still high enough
and our eyes not entirely shot with blood,
our lips. . . with mud.
You and I. You and I, friend.
We can root out this cancer,
this cancer of hate. . . this cancer of no love.
Let us catch it and cure it together.
You for me. And I for you.
please, please, won't you stop?
Won't you walk with me, talk with me . . .
Oh! You are afraid of me!
But I would not hurt you.
I am running, hiding, crying aloud in the dark. . .
I am like yourself!
And we are here for such a little, little while. . .

 DOROTHY GLAZER.

Death Wears A Coat Of Many Colors

To Teddy;

Death was a scolding elder
Who spanked his tiny, jam-stained fingers,
Snatched away his toys,
Pulled down the shades
And sentenced him to bed
Before his day began.

Death came to Joe as Peace
Before the battle,
A stilling of the call to arms;
Yet as a fatal stab
Deep in the back
As he set forth to climb the distant hill.
Death was an odious escort

To Alice:
She kept him waiting in the parlour
 As long as possible.
That night she drank and laughed and danced too much
And, as she feared,
He kissed her' when he brought her home.

To Ma;
Death was a welcome bed-fellow,
A long-awaited mate,
Who eased into her bed
At the close of a weary day,
Rubbed her aching back
And led her into sleep.

PHILIP BUTCHER.

On The Eve Of A Second Marriage

Will it be possible for me to kneel
Beside this other man and take our vow?
What quickening of memory will I feel?
What thoughts have I left, dormant up to now?
There are a thousand little things I fear;
The scent of roses, sunlight through a pane,
The look of him who holds me far more dear
Than you would hold me, were you here again.
"Till death. . . I take thee. . . cherish… love. . . to keep,"
Oh God, if just the words were not the same!
I am afraid that I will stand, and weep
And finding you not there, cry out your name.

JOSEPHINE M. PROFFITT

At Sunrise

They pushed him straight against the wall,

The firing squad dropped in a row,
And why he raised upon his toes,
These men shall never know.
He wore a smile across his face
As he stood primly there,
The guns all aiming at his heart,
The sun upon his hair.
For he remembered in a flash
Those days now past recall
When his proud mother took his height
Against the bedroom wall.

-Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni

Remembrance

I have no photograph of you,
 And yet how clearly I can see
Your understanding eyes of blue
 Smile down at me;
I have no record of your tone,
 And yet how often you are near!
Your phrases, answering my own,
 Fall on my ear.
I have no promise that the years 
Will not be many till we meet,
And yet I dream, through smiles and tears,
 And count dreams sweet.

-Anne Campbell