The Return of Our Boys 
 
 Jl ^ale of Qreat T)a^s 
 
 J. EDGAR PARK 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
The Return of Our Boys 
 
 Jl Vale of Great T>ays 
 
 J. EDGAR PARK 
 
 Copyright 1919 
 J. Edgar Park 
 
 Ernest F. Dow, Publisher, Wesl Newton, Massachusetts 
 
<A 
 
 
 V 
 
 By the same author 
 
 The Keen Joy of Living 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount 
 
 The Wonder of His Gracious Words 
 
 The Man Who Missed Christmas 
 
 The Dwarf's Spell 
 
 Parables of Life 
 
 How I Spent My Million 
 
 The Rejuvenation of Father Christmas 
 
 The Disadvantages of Being Good 
 
 The Children's Bread 
 
 The Bad Results of Good Habits 
 
 The Return of Our Boys 
 
 DEC 10 1919 
 
 ©CI.A559003 
 
 "to 
 
THE RETURN OF OUR BOYS 
 
 It had been a wet and cheerless 
 summer. True to its name, it had 
 rained nineteen days out of every 
 nineteen. The war was over. Most 
 of our soldiers had returned from 
 Europe except those of whom we 
 sadly said: 'They never will return!" 
 
 Those who had come back to us 
 had most of them returned stronger 
 and bigger in every way. In char- 
 acter and poise ten years older, we 
 said, than when they went away. 
 They had left us boys. They had 
 been given back to us men. 
 
 They talked little of what they had 
 seen. They said nothing of what they 
 
4 THE RETURN 
 
 had done. Back into our life they 
 came, glad to forget, travelled with 
 us and worked with us again. 
 
 But often between the conventional 
 lines of their lives, in stray glances and 
 odd turns of phrase we seemed to read 
 strange tales of flame and terror and 
 heroic drudgery amid the mud and 
 in the lonely skies of France. 
 
 But to our eternal boys across the 
 seas our hearts strayed often back, 
 boys who would never come as men 
 again to cheer us. 
 
 At last late in the fall suddenly 
 there was a perfect day. It had been 
 a still night full of stars and they 
 faded on a morning clear and bright 
 compelling us to rise betimes and 
 greet the sun. 
 
OF OUR BOYS 5 
 
 The family, surprised to find itself 
 downstairs together, looked at each 
 other with a kind of early morning 
 gladness, saying: "What a morning! 
 What a wonderful morning after the 
 rain!" Breakfast was not ready and 
 one suggested: "Let us go outdoors! 
 It is like a spring day outside!" 
 
 So the whole family found them- 
 selves upon the doorstep in the open 
 air. How great was their surprise as 
 they looked up and down the street 
 to see the freshness of the morning 
 light casting a kind of halo around 
 just such a family group at every 
 door. Then they called neighborly 
 greetings over to each other, feeling 
 friendlier than they had for years. 
 
 We were about to go in again, when 
 
6 THE RETURN 
 
 the little mother holding up her hand, 
 called us to "Listen." Then there 
 was silence among us for we too 
 heard something that made our hearts 
 stop beating for an instant. Long we 
 stood listening. All heard that sound, 
 but no two heard alike. 
 
 To one it was the march of feet 
 returning, the breaking of ranks, and 
 then singled out from among the rest 
 the unmistakably familiar tread of a 
 boy coming towards us. 
 
 To another it was the whirr of 
 wings in the sky, the stopping of an 
 engine, the gliding down of a plane 
 and then a sudden rush as to out- 
 stretched arms. 
 
 To yet another it was the notes of a 
 bugle coming nearer and nearer, end- 
 
OF OUR BOYS 7 
 
 ing suddenly beside us as though 
 choked off in merry laughter at the 
 sight of us and home. 
 
 Some heard nothing but felt a hand 
 in their hand. Some knew lips touched 
 theirs. 
 
 But one thing we all knew as we 
 turned together with him into the 
 house again: 'The Boys had returned!" 
 
 Before our morning meal was over 
 we knew that they still were boys. 
 The disillusionments, the intricacies, 
 the petty delays and disappointments 
 which succeed every war and tarnish 
 for a time the victory were not shared 
 by them. They had come back in the 
 full flush of heroic idealism as they had 
 gone forth. 
 
 Then began for our town the days 
 
8 THE RETURN 
 
 of the golden age again, when we felt 
 invisible feet trod our streets and 
 unseen eyes of youth were upon us, 
 expecting great things of us. 
 
 It was in laughter first that their 
 continued presence became known to 
 us. Where they were, gloom could 
 not abide. In their homes you felt a 
 boy's presence again as you entered 
 the door. 
 
 There is always a touch of incon- 
 sequent fun about a home where 
 there is a boy. It never can have the 
 deadly, tidy, unused, adult look about 
 it of a boyless home. And the parents 
 of boys have eyes that are not dully 
 sure of just what is going to happen 
 next. Their eyes so often love while 
 their mouths must scold that their 
 
OF OUR BOYS 9 
 
 faces have that almost human look so 
 rare in parents. The mother, when 
 she has schooled herself to take the 
 risks of letting her baby boy grow into 
 a man, is apt to be even more of a 
 boy than the father. For the father's 
 stiff and dignified self respect so often 
 thinks it cannot afford to recognize or 
 remember the funny little fellow he 
 used to be. But to a woman, boys 
 have always been terrible, forgivable, 
 admirable. 
 
 So when you entered one of these 
 homes, you felt again the presence of 
 the boy. These, you said to yourself, 
 are boy's parents, the boy spirit is 
 abroad in their home, they are the 
 friends of all boys. They love him 
 now for himself alone. Not now for 
 
10 THE RETURN 
 
 their pride in him before their boyless 
 neighbors, nor for his future value as 
 a helper in his father's trade, nor for 
 the sense of ownership and comfort 
 his presence used to give them in the 
 house, not for what he was to them 
 but for what he is in himself, they 
 love him now, the spirit of their home. 
 In America one breathes in the very 
 air a subtle intellectual essence un- 
 known in other lands. Men's minds 
 respond to simpler truth, men's souls 
 thrill far more brotherly together, we 
 respect each other more, we bow to 
 accidental status less. And when the 
 stranger seeks to know this mystery's 
 meaning, we reply: "Once we had 
 Lincoln!" Nay, our answer rather is: 
 "We have Lincoln! He flows in our 
 
OF OUR BOYS 11 
 
 blood here. His is the evanescent 
 face patterned beneath all the surface 
 figures of our life!" 
 
 So began to rule in these homes too 
 the sunny spirit of their sons who died 
 and live forever. 
 
 And on our streets too men walking 
 hand in hand with unseen figures 
 could not fail to stop and greet each 
 other, when their boys were friends. 
 These unseen hands refused to let 
 them pass. The boys desired to talk, 
 so the men stopped too, and barriers 
 of race and means and social power or 
 need were gone. Their boys were 
 living over common dangers under- 
 gone and days and nights of comrade- 
 ship. So the boys leapt over all the 
 narrow fences of religion, society and 
 
12 THE RETURN 
 
 race and with them dragged us too. 
 And with our unseen guests our town 
 became more neighborly than ever 
 had been known before. 
 
 They did not seem to think that 
 they had fought for an abstract prin- 
 ciple. They seemed to think the war 
 was waged to make our lives more 
 worth while. They were so concrete 
 about it. Every morning they seemed 
 to say: "Now make this day worth all 
 that it has cost!" No one of them 
 talked of himself, but they talked to 
 us of their friends. "Think what this 
 one and that went through," they 
 would remind us, "just to give you 
 the chance to go out as you will and 
 walk down the street safely to your 
 business this morning!" 
 
OF OUR BOYS 13 
 
 After a night of terrible storm on the 
 sea-coast of Scotland, the wives of 
 the fishermen at a little village were 
 out at daybreak to scan the horizon 
 for their husbands' boats. It had 
 been a night of terror, and in the 
 gray morning it was a long, long wait 
 before one by one, as by miracle the 
 boats began to limp into harbor torn 
 and shattered, bearing their catch of 
 haddock. Hardly had they come into 
 port, before a travelling fish-merchant 
 was at the quay calling to the fish- 
 wives: "What price haddies the day?" 
 With indignation in her eyes one wife 
 answered him back: "Haddies is men's 
 lives the day!" 
 
 So each one of us began to think: 
 "This day has been bought for us by 
 
14 THE RETURN 
 
 blood !' ' ' 'This day is precious as mens' 
 lives!" We began to think more nobly 
 of life. We took time for courtesy. 
 We ceased the idle pursuit of enjoy- 
 ment and strove to increase the general 
 capacity for joy. We seemed some- 
 how to be becoming more like the 
 "home" they had dreamed about so 
 often in the trenches. 
 
 People selfishly absorbed in making 
 a living looked up to find their hands 
 in their neighbors hands, and to- 
 gether we began to try and make a 
 life. Even the gluttons found their 
 faces turned mysteriously from their 
 own plates to see how little others had 
 got. And the very humorists could 
 not think of the point of their jokes 
 before they had thought of the other 
 
OF OUR BOYS 15 
 
 fellow's feelings first. Mysterious 
 forces seemed to block our selfishness 
 on every hand. 
 
 We had our sceptics of course. A 
 few solemn wiseacres who had never 
 really been alive themselves, and so 
 were experts upon death, went around 
 declaring that this idea about the 
 boys having returned was all sentiment 
 and gush. One November day some 
 of them stood arguing at a street 
 corner, declaring that the idea of 
 unseen power and life was ridiculous. 
 Just then a sudden gust of wind blew 
 their hats off and they ran the whole 
 length of the street after them fol- 
 lowed by a windy sound of boyish 
 laughter. Did it happen accidentally? 
 Who knows? The wind bloweth where 
 
16 THE RETURN 
 
 it listeth, and the laughter may have 
 been but the sound thereof. 
 
 That awful tune, "The Dead March 
 in Saul" met with strange fate that 
 year, for there were gatherings of 
 people who felt that low spirits were 
 a sign of piety and liked it. The 
 organist had hardly started the ac- 
 cursed thing once when a fire alarm 
 was sounded, and the rest of its pound- 
 ings were drowned in fire bells and 
 the dashing past of engines and lad- 
 ders. Once when some sad soul began 
 talking at a meeting of "the manhood 
 lost to the life of the nation" a nearby 
 rooster began to crow and kept it up 
 most unnaturally all through his re- 
 marks, only stopping when the next 
 speaker began: — "These boys are not 
 
OF OUR BOYS 17 
 
 lost to the life of the nation. They 
 are still living: still loving: still ours. 
 They are the leading spirits of the 
 nation today." That second speaker 
 seemed inspired. A great stillness 
 reigned among us as he spoke. His 
 voice broke with eagerness at the end 
 into a kind of high falsetto. It seemed 
 as if Roosevelt was getting his mes- 
 sage over through him. The wine of 
 young life was flowing in our veins 
 those days. A new gaiety was ours. 
 Beside us was a great company of glad 
 victorious souls expressing themselves 
 through us, correcting our gloom by 
 their joy. 
 
 To one mother who sat alone sor- 
 rowing came that evening the girl 
 whom he had loved. These two 
 
18 THE RETURN 
 
 women had often sat for hours in sad 
 memory together. But today, as she 
 looked at the mother sitting there 
 alone reading, the girl's face was radi- 
 ant. "He has returned!" were the 
 words she said. "This morning sud- 
 denly I knew!" 
 
 Then sitting down beside the mother 
 she said: "Here is a letter he wrote me 
 long ago from the trenches which I 
 never understood. This last page I 
 hated. I could not even read it again. 
 But this morning he seemed to be 
 making me read it with him. Then 
 I understood: — 
 
 "And if I should miss you here, how 
 terrible! But if I should, remember this: 
 Be still the girl I fell in love with, beautiful 
 and joyful. I want you to promise to be 
 happy, to love. I will be no dead dog in the 
 
OF OUR BOYS 19 
 
 manger for some other lucky man. Be no 
 nun for me! I'll get even with him yet. 
 This world is only the primary class in love. 
 The real thing lies beyond. In some other 
 world we shall meet as strangers, you and I. 
 We shall have all the shy delighted thrills of 
 getting acquainted, far better than before. 
 I shall walk again hours before your door 
 getting up my courage to propose. And 
 when at last I see love again in your dear 
 eyes — then we shall remember that I claimed 
 and missed you once before! But then I 
 shall not miss you! For my faith is that 
 in the next life we lose our status. We are 
 there just what we are, with none of the 
 accidents of this life to confuse. No one 
 will recognize anyone there by anything 
 except by love. And love there is going to 
 beat love here a thousand to nothing!" 
 
 Now one of that boy's innumerable 
 little ways had been his constant 
 joking with his mother about her 
 addiction to the Saturday Night Tran- 
 script. When she used to sit reading 
 it, scattering the various sections on 
 
20 THE RETURN 
 
 the floor around her as she read, he 
 used to come in and look at her with 
 mock solemn eyes, saying: — "Ah, 
 mother, at it again! It's worse than 
 the drink!" 
 
 So when these two had read his 
 letter, the girl looked at the floor and 
 there they were around the mother's 
 chair, all the sections scattered on the 
 floor. "Worse than the drink!" she 
 said, and they both laughed, and in 
 that laugh his mother knew. 
 
 So when Christmas drew near we 
 all became young again. People who 
 had been talking and thinking about 
 their souls or their bodies or their 
 clothes, people who had been cheer- 
 fully predicting that because neither 
 God nor man would take their advice 
 
OF OUR BOYS 21 
 
 therefore the world was going to the 
 dogs, — all folks suddenly became young 
 again. Our boys' gift to us was their 
 youth. They meant to enjoy it in us. 
 Fathers and mothers, instead of worry- 
 ing about the rising cost of shoes, 
 said after the children had gone to 
 bed: "Let the future look after itself. 
 We'll give them a real good Christmas 
 this year!" Even High School boys 
 and girls dropped the universe from 
 their shoulders and became young and 
 sincerely happy again. It was not 
 the heartless and frivolous imitation 
 gaiety you can buy. It was joy won 
 by victory. Their faith and courage 
 and idealism, they were giving to us 
 for our Christmas present. It was 
 ours to win by victory over circum- 
 
22 THE RETURN 
 
 stances and self. But their strength 
 was added to ours in the winning of it. 
 They side-tracked our minds from the 
 old septic matter that made us old 
 and morbid, they stood in our light 
 as we tried to gaze at our own be- 
 loved selves in the mirror of our am- 
 bition, and robbed us of our favorite 
 worries. 
 
 The dance, the battle had broken, 
 began again. "You will never be 
 happy here if you are not happy 
 there," they declared, "true joy in 
 this world flows into the joy of heaven 
 as a river flows into the sea!" 
 
 So it came about that every gift 
 that Christmas was planned by them. 
 They gave themselves to us. Through 
 us they gave to all. Our happiness 
 was theirs. 
 
OF OUR BOYS 23 
 
 One extraordinary feature of that 
 Christmas season was the number of 
 gifts which got criss-crossed in their 
 delivery. 
 
 The set of furs which the laborer 
 meant to give to his wife got somehow 
 to the poor teacher's wife instead. 
 To the spoiled daughter of the union 
 they would have meant simply more 
 pride and ostentation as she sat in 
 her Universal Car. To the slave of 
 the School Committee's wife they 
 meant her only warm possession as 
 she stood on the chill corner waiting 
 to cross when the Fords had passed. 
 
 The washerwoman whom the 
 wealthy husband discovered the day 
 before Christmas and bribed to go to 
 help his wife's three maids to do the 
 
24 THE RETURN 
 
 family-of-two wash for the week was 
 somehow found scrubbing for the maid- 
 less mother of five. 
 
 Everyone noticed how much more 
 attractive, — almost pretty, — the plain 
 Miss Bones looked on Christmas Day. 
 The reason was that the big sheaf of 
 American Beauties and the small trunk 
 of chocolates which Don Maurice of the 
 college center back meant to send to 
 Dolly More "from a fellow who ad- 
 mires you, you know who!" had come 
 somehow to Miss Bones and made her 
 more beautiful. 
 
 Several of the innumerable, tender 
 proud remembrances sent by friends 
 to the mother of the famous son who 
 died gloriously in action came with a 
 welcome surprise and a joy no words 
 
OF OUR BOYS 2*5 
 
 can tell to the forlorn mother whose 
 boy died of influenza in the hospital at 
 home. 
 
 Pretty little children set out Christ- 
 mas Eve to leave gifts for popular 
 children friends and returned confes- 
 sing having given them to most sur- 
 prised and delighted middle-aged lonely 
 folk who could not get over the 
 shock of happiness for weeks. 
 
 Yes, there were funny tricks played 
 that Christmas. Things would not 
 run in the conventional line. And 
 when donors were faced with these 
 apparent misdeliveries they only smiled 
 and said that there was no one to 
 blame but themselves. Everyone acted 
 as if guided by invisible friends. They 
 started to do the easy natural ordinary 
 
26 THE RETURN 
 
 thing and found themselves doing the 
 extraordinary friendlier thing. 
 
 The gay heroism of boys who in the 
 midst of death had seen the souls of 
 their fellows and loved them was 
 abroad among us. We seemed worthier 
 of them then. 
 
 It had been their great desire to 
 live again in the America for which 
 they died. But they gave their lives 
 not for the imperfect America of men's 
 hands, but for the glorious America of 
 men's dreams, 
 
 "Whose alabaster cities gleam 
 Undimmed by human tears." 
 
 Their desire has been granted. They 
 have returned to live again, not in 
 this sadly imperfect land. Their home 
 
OF OUR BOYS 27 
 
 forever is in the America we love, that 
 is in our hearts. Their eternal youth 
 will goad us on forever until we build 
 on these shores the land for which 
 they died — America the Beautiful. 
 
Ill 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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