Bemidji Daily Pioneer Newspaper, May 31, 1920, Page 2

LILACS just turned purple out by the front gate and the dew still wet on the green grass, the faint strains of band music drifting out above the maples of -the town and a flag draped out on the ¥ o porch. It's been & good many years now, but each time the day comes around I'm back there in fancy. There's no use going back any more —except In fancy. For the little white- haired man who hung out the flag every Decoration day morning isn't there any more; strangers would be sitting on the front porch. wasn't much sentiment in his makeup about most things, but he never missed hanging out that flag. He'd fought for it. A thousand times—now that it's too lace—I've been sorry I didn’t take more interest when he tried to tell meabout those days. Somehow, on those days, the sky seemed a bluer blue when the words of the speaker at the “Monument of the Unknown Dead” were carried off by the faint breeze that mutfiled, too, the song of the quartette and Ihe music of the village band. But close in my ears were the chirps of the in- gects in the bluegrass and the tweet of the robins that hopped about in the branches of the evergreens. There was one teacher we had who took her work seriously. She is gone now, too, but in those days her eyes flashed vitality and the color came and went in her cheeks as she interpreted our history lessons. She was at her best when she told us of the treachery of Benedict Arnold, the man who thought more of personal ease and comfort than he did of his country at a time when it existence was in jeopardy. How she taught us to hate Benedict Arnold and all that his name stood for! Yet she was mistaken about there being no more wars. One February day the Chicago papers that did not reach us until noon told about the sinking of the Maine. I can see my There | South—Mississippl. “Well,” sald my father, going over to the sink to wash his hands, “you've come home. When I call upstairs for you now. in the mornings I'll get & answer. ‘Mother will tell you I call up there every morning just the same even though I know there’s no one there. my. .garden, my- back's,_pretty lame from getting down among those onions. And the lawn ought to be mowed. To- morrow’s. Decoration .day ‘and the parade will be going past hére.” “That's something I'vé missed these keep: it golng?” The look that came Into thelr faces! K “Still keep it golng?’ my mother gasped. “What kind of teachings did you pick up down there?” “They were all right, mother.” I as- sured her, “but I never heard ‘March- older brothér as he came home from | ing Through ‘Georgia’-sung at all and where he was working downtown &nd | they did-show me how there was:a told my father and mother what he good’-deal of bunk in ‘Uncle Tom's bad done—enlisted in the'local militia | Cabin’ and: there wasn't:much para- company. My mother didn’t say any- | dise about - those Northérn prisons | thing. She went back to the kitchen | either, I learned. But I was sitting and pretended- that something was | cut on the porch this morning watch- keeping her very busy, but my father | ing the. automobiles- go by... Most of crossed to' the closet where he kept | them were driven by folks who.have his Civil war relics—his discharge pa- | only been over In America a few years pers, his badges, a dagger taken from | —folks who came: over here and picked a Confederate. foe.. I wonder how the | out the'land that's jumped to-such a; people who have since moved in and | high price. It struck me how you had moved out of “that old house have gmbbed“along"here as ploneers, put: used that closet. ting up with all the hardships, driv- It wasn’t much of a war, but along | ing 30 miles for flour while you walited in July they started o ship some of | for the railroad and going through all the boys In those thick, hot uniforms | sorts of privation. And now the coun- back . from = Chickamauga. They | try around here's settled—two-thirds shipped them back on cots, and when | of it by foreigners who haven't yet lost they lifted them off the train they their old country accent—and where'’s were such skeletons we hardly recog-'| your part of the results? Maybe nized them. At ieast half had typhoid | you've given too much thought to your fever before the last of them, drib- | war relics and the state encampments bling home by handfuls, had returned. | of the G..\A. R. and the Lincoln’s Six of them died. The insanitary | birthday meeting and all that stuff. camp had proven as disastrous as any- It seems to me—" enemy bullets, Our boys, “brave as “My boy,” my father began in a the bravest,” were unprepared for the | tone that told me his fighting blood strenuousness of war, was up, “if you'd given the best four My ‘brother didn’'t come back on a | years of your life fighting for some- | cot, but he came back with the color | thing as we had to fight, you'd feel gone for good from his cheeks, and differently about it. Maybe I didn’t where it had been easy for him to | realize fully what it meant when I laugh before he now made unsuccess- | went in—I was only eighteen—but I ful attempts. And yet he came back | knew what I was fighting for by the uncomplaining. He sat around the | time we stopped that charge at Get- house for a day or two. I remember | tysburg. We had ‘copperheads’ then the nights were beginning to get cool | —folks who. said the war was foolish right after school, the tomato vines | and stayed home to make profit from had already been frosted, and the yard | it. It's all vague to you—you came 80 was littered with fallen maple leaves. | long afterward. You ean't understand Then he went about it to pick up the | how we old fellows feel when we come threads of life where they had been | across one another wearing' the-iittle broken. No—no country could lick | bronze button, but 1 wouldn't exchange the United States. History had re- | my little bronze button for' all the au! peated. tomobiles In’ the county!” And the years passed. 1 remember |« .Yes, there’s -strangers. living in the going back home once along about | old. house : now. They've - probably Decoration day. The old place had | changed things around. a: lot; it was run down a good deal and things had | pretty old-fashioned"inside. The:last changed; I noticed the gray hair on | time I went by it I couldn’t stand to father's .head when he came In from | take any more than’ just a hurried the garden and took off his hat; I no- | glance fn its direction, but I’ saw ticed mother limp as she nervously | they’d cut down the lilac bushes. Yet pottered about to tidy up the rooms | I fancy they hang out a flag on the old as a tribute to my unexpected arrival. | porch 6n Decoratfon: day -morning. For a long time they had been alone | They’d have to; his spirit would.make now—just the two of them. I had | them do it.—Chicago -Tribune. * ! been down- South, down in' the oltl, Maybe you can help me weed last two years,” I sald. “Do they still, ©' Venice Art Being Restored. Now;that the war is over and Ven- ice has ‘recovere] from the nightmare of having her wealth of art destroyed by shell fire, or, orse still, looted by goldiers, one by one her treasures from underground cellars or distant.galler- fes are being returned to thelr places. One of - her most admired . posses- slons, however, Titlan’s “Assumption of the Virgin” which is counted among the seven great masterpleces in the world, the prideof the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts, has been re- original home in the choir of-, the beautiful ‘gothic Church of the Frari, for which it was painted by Titian in 1516.. : ‘The 'magnificent frame of carved marble originally built’ round it now shows off. the glorious picture to ad- vantage and the Venetians are delight- ed that;it should be restored to the position where. its donors and the great genius who composed it intend- ed it to remain, Very Much So. ‘ “Do you always receive a warm wel come when you-go bome?” hot water there.” . turned, not to the gallery, but to-its. “Naturally, when I always get inte Y] Vil IF .S : TO GET pow ‘ . THE WANT Cull out weak or slpw-growing YOU WANT TO chick, — s, o GET YOU WANT Eggs being taken to market should GRTEOA'gEV}- mwfi& : 4 be protected from the sun’s rays. . o If the Hen house Is damp, It is safe to say fewer eggs.wl_l_l be laid, | FOR QUICK AND CLEAN SERVICE. THE BEMIDJI PIONEER EATAT THE An':réin the‘ Street from the Markham Hotel L | —a dirty automobi ‘to give your car a room. We oty 1 ‘Four-drawer filing"cabinet fof]. - QOverseas .Re le is an unnecessary evil. We are now equipped ‘first -class bath and polish in our indoor bath have installed a new “bathtub” and wash rack-and - ‘have engaged the services of a first class man, who guarantees to satisfy in every detail.’ ' b ‘ Bring your car her#, he will do the rest. : [all letter-size- papers. All joints, . ‘electrically " welded. , Patented progressive " roller ‘suspension makes the c]rawersfslide,usfly and noiselessly k PIONEE BEMIDJI R STATIONERY HOUSE (The All-Steel Store) B 5+ . 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