The Defenders of Democracy

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"If I see you many more Mondays," Martha would say, grimly, tossing
it into the heap at her side, "there won't be anything left of
the original cloth. I should think people would realize that this
laundry darns socks, but it doesn't manufacture 'em."

Before the advent of the ingenious mending machine I suppose more
men than would care to admit it married largely because they grew
so tired of seeing those eternal holes grinning back at them from
heel and toe, and of feeling for absent buttons in a hastily donned
shirt. The Elite laundry owed much of its success to the fact that
it advertised alleviation for these discomforts.

If you had known Martha as I know her you would have found a certain
pathos in the thought of this spare spinster performing for legions
of unknown unseen men those homely, intimate tasks that have long
been the duty of wife or mother. For Martha had no men-folks.
Martha was one of those fatherless, brotherless, husbandless women
who, because of their state, can retain their illusions about men.
She had never known the tragedy of setting forth a dinner only to
have hurled at her that hateful speech beginning with, "I had that
for lunch." She had never seen a male, collarless, bellowing about
the house for his laundry. She had never beheld that soul-searing
sight--a man in his trousers and shirt, his suspenders dangling,
his face lathered, engaged in the unbecoming rite of shaving.

Her knowledge of the home habits of the male biped she gleaned from
the telltale hints of the inanimate garments that passed through
her nimble hands. She could even tell character and personality
from deductions gathered at heel and toe. She knew, for example,
that F.C. (in black ink) was an indefatigable fox trotter and she
dubbed him Ferdy Cahn, though his name, for all she knew, might
have been Frank Callahan. The dancing craze, incidentally, had
added mountainous stacks to Martha's already heaped up bins.

The Elite Laundry served every age and sex. But Martha's department
was, perforce, the unwed male section. No self-respecting wife
or mother would allow laundry-darned hose or shirts to reflect on
her housekeeping habits. And what woman, ultra-modern though she
be, would permit machine-mended stockings to desecrate her bureau
drawers? So it was that Martha ministered, for the most part, to
those boarding house bachelors living within delivery-wagon proximity
to the Elite Laundry.

It was early in May that Martha first began to notice the white
lisle socks marked E.G. She picked them from among the great heap
at her work table because of the exquisite fineness of the darning
that adorned them. It wasn't merely darning. It was embroidery.
It was weaving. It was cobweb tapestry. It blended in with the
original fabric so intimately that it required an expert eye to
mark where darning finished and cloth began. Martha regarded it
with appreciation unmarred by envy, as the artisan eye regards the
work of the artist.

"That's his mother's darning," she thought, as she smoothed it with
one work-scarred finger. "And she doesn't live here in Chicago. No,
sir! It takes a small town mother to have the time and patience for
that kind of work. She's the kind whose kitchen smells of ginger
cookies on Saturday mornings. And I'll bet if she ever found a
moth in the attic she'd call the fire department. He's her only
son. And he's come to the city to work. And his name--his name
is Eddie."

And Eddie he remained for the months that followed.

Now, there was nothing uncanny in Martha Eggers' deduction
that a young man who wears white hose, miraculously darned, is a
self-respecting young man, brought up by a worshiping mother who
knows about ginger cookies and winter underwear, and whose Monday
washing is fragrant with the clean-smelling scent of green grass
and sunshine. But it was remarkable that she could pick this one
needle from the haystack of socks and shirts that towered above
her. She ran her hand through hundreds of garments in the day's
work. Some required her attention. Some were guiltless of rent
or hole. She never thought of mating them. That was the sorter's
work. But with Eddie's socks it was different. They had not, as
yet, required the work of her machine needle. She told her self,
whimsically, that when the time came to set her crude work next
to the masterly effects produced by the needle of Eddie's ma every
fiber in her would shrink from the task. Of course Martha did not
put it in just that way. But the thought was there. And bit by
bit, week by week, month by month, the life, and aims, and ambitions,
and good luck and misfortunes of this country boy who had come
to the call of the city, were unfolded before the keen eye of the
sparse spinster who sat stitching away in the window of the Elite
Laundry.

For a long, long time the white hose lacked reinforcements, so
that they began to grow thin from top to toe. Martha feared that
they would go to pieces in one irremediable catastrophe, like the
one-hoss shay. Evidently Eddie's job did not warrant unnecessary
expenditures. Then the holes began to appear. Martha tucked
them grimly under the glittering needle of the Klinger darner and
mender but at the first incision she snapped the thread, drew out
the sock, and snipped the stitches.

"His ma'd have a fit. I'll just roll 'em up, and take 'em home
with me to-night and darn 'em by hand." She laughed at herself,
a little shame-faced laugh, but tender, too.

She did darn them that night, in the twilight, and in the face
of the wondering contempt of Myrt. Myrt dwelt across the hall in
five-roomed affluence with her father and mother. She was one of
the ten stenographers employed by the Slezak Film Company. There
existed between the two women an attraction due to the law of
opposites. Myrt was nineteen. She earned twelve dollars a week.
She knew all the secrets of the moving picture business, but even
that hideous knowledge had left her face unscarred. Myrt's twelve
was expended wholly upon the embellishment of Myrt. Myrt was one
of those asbestos young women upon whom the fires of life leave no
mark. She regarded Martha Eggers, who dwelt in one room, in the
rear, across the hall, with that friendly contempt which nineteen,
cruelly conscious of its charms, bestows upon plain forty.

She strolled into Martha Eggers' room now to find that lady
intent upon a white sock, darning needle in hand. She was working
in the fast-fading light that came through her one window. Myrt,
kimono-clad, stared at her in unbelief.

"Well, I've heard that when actors get a day off they go to the
theater. I suppose it's the same idea. I should think you'd get
enough darning and mending from eight A. M. to six P. M. without
dragging it home with you."

"I'm doing it for a friend," said Martha, her head bent over her
work.

"What's his name?"

"Eddie."

"Eddie what?"

Martha blushed, pricked her finger, bent lower. "Eddie--Eddie
Grant."

At the end of the next six weeks every pair of Eddie Grant's hose,
heel and toe, bore the marks of Martha's workmanship. Then, quite
suddenly, they ceased to appear. Had he gone back home, defeated?
Had he moved to another neighborhood? Had he invested in a fresh
supply of haberdashery? On Tuesday of the seventh week E. G.'s
white hose appeared once more. Martha picked them from among the
heap. Instantly she knew. Clumsily, painstakingly, they had been
darned by a hand all unaccustomed to such work. A masculine hand,
as plucky as it was awkward.

"Why, the poor kid! The poor little kid! Lost his job for six
weeks, and did his own washing and mending."

That night she picked out the painfully woven stitches and replaced
them with her own exquisite workmanship.

Eddie's new job was evidently a distinct advance. The old socks
disappeared altogether. They had been darned until each one resembled
a mosaic. In their place appeared an entirely new set, with nothing
but the E. G. inked upon them by the laundry to distinguish them
from hundreds of others. Sometimes Martha missed them entirely.
then, suddenly, E. G. blossomed into silk, with clocking up the side,
and Martha knew that he was in love. She found herself wondering
what kind of girl she was, and whether the woman in the little
town that was Back Home to Eddie would have approved of her. One
day there appeared a pair of lovesick lavenders, but they never
again bloomed. Evidently she was the kind of a girl who would be
firm about those. Then, for a time--for two long weeks--E. G.'s
hose were black; somber, mournful, unrelieved black. They had
quarreled. After that they brightened. They became numerous,
and varied. There was about them something triumphant, ecstatic.
They rose to a paean.

"They're engaged," Martha told herself. "I hope she's the right
kind of a girl for Eddie."

Then, as they sobered down and even began to require some of Martha's
expert workmanship she knew that it was all right. "She's making
him save up."

Six months later the Elite Laundry knew E. G. no more.

Myrt, strolling into Martha's room one evening, as was her wont,
found that severe-faced lady suspiciously red-eyed. Even Myrt,
the unimaginative, sensed that some unhappiness had Martha in its
grip.

"What's the matter?"

"Oh, I don't know. Kinda lonesome, I guess. What's the news down
at your place?"

"News! Nothing ever happens in our office. Honestly, some days
I think I'll just drop dead, it's so slow. I took three hours
dictation from Hubbell this morning. He's writing the 'Dangers of
Dora' series, and I almost go to sleep over it. He's got her now
where she's chained in the cave with the tide coming up, on a deserted
coast, and nobody for miles around. I was tickled to death when
old Slezak called me away to fill out the contract blanks for him
and Willie Kaplan. Kaplan's signed up with the Slezak's for three
years at a million and a half a year. He stood over me while I
was filling it out--him and his brother Gus--as if I was going to
put something over on 'em when they weren't looking."

"My land! How exciting! It must be wonderful working in a place
like that."

Myrt yawned, and stretched her round young arms high above her
head.

"I don't see anything exciting about it. Of course it isn't as bad
as your job, sitting there all day, sewing and mending. It isn't
even as if you were sewing on new stuff, like a dressmaker, and
really making something out of it. I should think you'd go crazy,
it's so uninteresting."

Martha turned to the window, so that her face was hidden from Myrt.
"Oh, I don't know. Darning socks isn't so bad. Depends on what
you see in 'em."

"See in 'em!" echoed Miss Myrtle Halperin. "See! Well for the
love of heaven what can you see in mending socks, besides holes!"

Martha didn't answer. Myrt, finding things dull, took herself
off, languidly. At the door she turned and looked back on the
stiff little figure seated in the window with its face to the gray
twilight.

"What's become of your friend What's-his-name that you used to darn
socks for at home? Grant, wasn't it? Eddie Grant?"

"That was it," answered Martha. "He's married. He and his wife,
they've got to visit Eddie's folks back home, on their wedding trip.
I miss him something terrible. He was just like a son to me."

[signed] Edna Ferber

Those Who Went First

A distant bugle summoned them by day,
A far flame beckoned them across the night.
They rose--they flung accustomed things away,--
The habit of old days and new delight.
They heard--they saw--they turned them over-seas,--
Oh, Land of ours, rejoice in such as these!

This was no call that sounded at their door,
No wild torch flaming in their window space,--
yet the quick answer went from shore to shore,
The swift feet hastened to the trysting place,
Laughing, they turned to death from peace and ease,--
Oh, Land of ours, be proud of such as these!

High hearts--great hearts--whose valor strikes for us
Out of the awful Dissonance of war
This perfect note,--in you the chivalrous
YOUNG SEEKERS OF THE GRAIL RE-LIVE ONCE MORE,--
Acclaimed of men, or fallen where none sees,
Oh, Land of ours, be glad of such as these!

[signed]Theodosia Garrison

A Summer's Day

Once I wrote a story of a woman's day in Paris, a Perfect Day. It
had to do with the buying of all the lovely trappings that are the
entrappings of the animal which Mr. Shaw believes woman endlessly
pursues. One of the animals was in the story, and there was food
and moonlight, music and adventure.

I never sold that marvelous tale. For years it has peeked out
at me from a certain pigeon hole in my desk with the anguish of
a prisoner in the Black Hole of Calcutta, and with as little hope
for its liberation into the glad air of a free press. Yet it is
with me now in Paris. In that last distracted moment of packing,
when all sense of what is needed has left one, it was thrust into
a glove case like contraband cigarettes. There may have been some
idea of remolding it with a few deceiving touches--make a soldier
of the hero probably--but with the "love interest" firmly remaining.
There was only one Perfect Day to a woman, I thought.

That was some weeks ago. I am now writing on the back of that
romance for lack of paper, writing of another day, wondering as
I work if the present day's adventures will have any quality that
might hold the reader's eye. I dare not ask for the reader's heart
when love does not stalk through the pages.

Paris is now an entrenched camp but one is not awakened by bugles,
and the beat of drums is unheard as the troops march through the
city. It was the regular "blump-blump" of military boots past
my window which possibly aroused me into activity, although the
companies crossing from station to cantonment no longer turn the
head of the small boy as he rolls his hoop along the Champs Elysees.
This troubles me, and I always go to the curb to watch them when
I am in the street.

There was an instant's hesitation before I pulled up the refractory
Venetian blind--the right rope so eager to rise, the left so
indifferent to its improvement--an instant's dread. I was afraid
"they" would be hopping about even this early in the morning,
hopping, hopping--the jerking gait of the mutilated--the little
broken waves of a sea of "horizon blue." But they must have been
just getting their faces washed at the Salon, where once we went
to see pictures and now find compositions more dire than the newest
schools of painting.

On the other side the stretch of chestnuts, the taxicabs, returned
to their original mission, were already weaving about in their
effort to exterminate each other. Battling at the Marne had been
but a slight deviation in their mode of procedure, yet when a cab
recently ran down and killed a bewildered soldier impeded by a
crutch strange to him, Paris raised its voice in a new cry of rage.
Beyond the Champs Elysees, far beyond, rose the Eiffel tower.
Capable, immune so far from the attacks of the enemy, its very
outlines seem to have taken on a great importance. Once the giant
toy of a people who frolicked, it now serves in its swift mission
as the emblem of a race more gigantic than we had conceived.

It is not a relieving thought to such of us as still can play, that
spirit, whether in the bosom of the boulevardier or his country
cousin playing bowls in the cool of the evening, is the same that
projects itself brilliantly across the battlefield; that the flash
of a woman's eye as she invites a conquest is the flame upon the
alter when sacrifice is needed; that the very gaiety which makes
one laugh is a force to endure the deepest pits that have been
dug for mankind. Even as I continually struggle with a lump in my
throat which I often think should remain with me forever, I dare
claim that of all the necessitous qualities in life the spirit
of play must be the last to leave a race. Its translation to the
gravities of living needs no bellows for the coaxing of the fire.
It is ever burning upon the hearth of the happy heart.

The gilded statuary of the bridge of Alexander III, like flaming
beacons in the sun's rays, waved us out and on to the Invalides to
see the weekly awarding of medals. It is presumably the gay event
of the week as the band plays, and there is some color in the throngs
who surge along the colonnades to look into the court of honor.
A portion of the great space is now accommodating huge shattered
cannon and air craft of the enemy, their massiveness suggesting, as
the little glittering medals are pinned upon the soldiers' breasts,
that it is not so easy to be a hero and go a-capturing.

By the judicious wavings of famous autographs we were permitted the
upper balcony to sketch the heroic ones within the hollow square
formed by soldiers and marines. Directly beneath us stood the
band with the brassard of the red cross on their arms, for they
are still the stretcher bearers at the front. In the center of
the square was a little group of men, seventy perhaps but the space
was vast. Some were standing, some seated with stiff stumps of
legs sticking out queerly. Here and there a nurse stood by a blind
man, and there were white oblong gaps in the line which designated
the beds of the paralyzed.

I had set my teeth and said that I must stand it when across the
courtyard like a liquid stream of some spilled black portion came the
mothers and the wives, who were to wear the ribbon their soldiers
had earned in exchange for their lives. Or should there be little
sons or daughters they received this wondrous emblem of their fathers'
sacrifice. We could see the concerted white lift of handkerchiefs
to the eyes of the black line of women as the general bestowed the
honors. But the little children were tranquil.

With the beginning of the distribution the band, for which I had
longed that it might give a glow to the war, swung into a blare of
triumph. It was the first note of music we had heard in France.
And as we all expressed our emotion with abandonment throughout
the enlivening strains of "The Washington Post," I appreciated the
infinite wisdom of marching drumless through the streets--of the
divine lack of the bugles' song. For music, no matter its theme,
makes happy only those who are already happy. To those who suffer
it urges an unloosening of their grief--and grief must not go abroad
in France.

There was an end to the drama. The guard of honor marched through
the porte, banners flying. It was a happy ending, I suppose,
though one might not think so by the triumphal chariots that entered
the court to bear away the heroes--chariots with that red emblem
emblazoned upon a white disc which would have mystified an early
Caesar. But my thoughts were not entirely with the chief actors
in the play, rather with the squad of soldiers who had surrounded
them, the supers who would have enjoyed medals, too, and upon whom
opportunity had not smiled; whose epic of brave deeds may never
be read, and who, by chance, may go legless yet ribbonless up the
Champs Elysees.

"They" were hopping up the Avenue when we crossed it again, yet we
all went on about our daily tasks as one passes the blind man on
the corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirty-third Street. He may receive
a penny, a twang of the heart strings, but he must be passed
to go into the shop. My list was in my purse bearing but a faint
resemblance to the demands of other years. I thought as I took it
out what confusion of mind would have been my portion had I found
it in my purse three summers ago, in what state of madness could
any one prepare for a day in Paris such a program as: "Gloves,
Hospital 232, furs, workshop for blind, shell combs, see my baby
at Orphelinat, hair nets, cigarettes to my soldier, try on gowns,
funeral of Am. airman," and on and on through each day's great
accomplishment to the long quiet night.

Yet to buy freely and even frivolously in France need harass nothing
more soulful than a letter of credit, and it was with less of guilt
than of fear that I entered the courtyard of my furrier. I turned
the button ever so gently with the same dread in my heart that I
had suffered in going back to all of my shop keepers of previous
summers. Would he still be there? Two years is a long time, and
he was a young man. But he was there, wounded in the chest but at
work in the expectation of being recalled. He did not want to go
back, but of course if he was needed--

And I must lay stress on the magnificence of this hope that he might
not have to return to the trenches. I have found many who do not
want to go back. Fierce partisans of French courage deny this,
reading in my contention a lack of bravery, but to me it is valor
of a glorious color. For they do return without resentment, and,
what is more difficult in this day of monumental deeds and minute
bickerings, without criticism.

Like most of the men who came out of the trenches he had very
little to say about them. It amused him to hear that my new fur
coat purchased in America is of so fleeting a dye that I must dart
into the subway whenever the sun shines. He was laughing quietly
as he wished me a cloudy winter upon my descending the broad stone
steps into the empty, echoing courtyard. The unexpected appreciation
of my doubtful humor set me musing over the possibility of a duty
new to Americans. It is the French who have stood for gaiety. We
have warmed ourselves in their quick wit. Perhaps it is time for
us to do our little clownish best to set them laughing.

Having made the resolve I failed meanly to put it into execution.
I knew I was going to fail as the motor stopped before the great
house in the rue Daru--the lordly house of exquisitely tinted walls
although the colors are not seen by those who dwell within. There
is a paved COUR beyond the high wall with great steps leading up
to the hotel. At the right are the stables, where delicate fabrics
are woven--the workmen with heads erect; where are special looms
for those who, by the sad demands of this war, are denied hands as
well as their two eyes. At the left is another building and here
the men play in a gymnasium, even fence with confidence. In an
anteroom is a curious lay figure that the most sensitive of the
students may learn massage--it is the blind in Japan who give their
understanding fingers to this work--and in the rooms above is a
printing press, silent for lack of funds, but ready to give a paper
of his own to the sightless. Only, at "The Light House" they will
not accept that a single one of their guests is without vision.
"Ah GUARDIENNE," cried one of the students to the American woman
who has established our Light House methods over there, "you do not
see the unevenness of this fabric for your eyes are in your way."

I was standing in the room where the plan of the house is set upon
a table. It is the soldier's first lesson that he may know the
turns and steps, and run about without the pitiful outstretching
of arms. There were other callers upon the GUARDIENNE. A blind
graduate who had learned to live (which means to work) had returned
with his little old father, and both were telling her that he had
enough orders for his sweaters from the "Trois Quartiers" to keep him
occupied for two years. The family felt that he was established--so
there was nothing more to fear. And then because we were all happy
over it the old man and the woman and myself began to cry noiselessly.
Only the blind boy remained smiling through the choking silence.

I went to the window and glared down into the gardens where other
soldiers were studying at little tables with a professor for each,
and I asked myself why, in this great exigency, I was not being
funny and paying my debt to France. But there was nothing to be
funny about. The thing that dried my tears was the recollection
of the blind asylum of my youth, where the "inmates" never learned
to walk without groping, where we were shown hideous bead furniture,
too small for dolls, which was the result of their eager but misspent
lives.

There was a gown to be ordered before noon and as I drove back
through the Faubourg St. Honore I found myself looking fondly,
thirstily into the shop windows, lifting my free eyes to the charming
vagaries of old buildings, and again I made a vow although it had
nothing to do with humor. On my dressing table rests a cushion of
brocade and I shall carry it about as one who may yield to temptation
carries a pledge, for the card which is attached chants out to
me whenever my eyes rest upon it: "Soldat Pierre. Aveugle de la
guerre. Blesse a Verdun." And as long as Soldier Pierre. Blind
from the war. Wounded at Verdun can go on weaving his fabrics I pray
that I may carry whatever burden may be mine with the unrebellious
spirit.

Ah well! The robe took its place in the curriculum of my new
Parisian day. It was to be a replica in color of that worn by the
head of the house--her one of mourning was so bravely smart--for
the business must go on and only the black badge of glory in
fashionable form show itself in the gay salon. "Yes, we must go
on," she said, "though every wife may give her mate. It is of an
enormity to realize before one dies that he can be done without--that
there are enough little ones to keep France alive and we women in
the meantime can care for the country. Our men may die glad in
that thought, but I think there must be a little of grief, too.
It is sad not to be needed. Yes, Madame, blue for you where mine
is black, and in place of the crepe something very brilliant. It
is only Americans that we can make gay now, and it keeps the women
in the sewing room of good cheer to work in colors. Too dear you
think? Ah, no, Madame, observe the model!"

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