And now to the letter. It is just a few days
since I got it. In writing to one of my hotel
acquaintances I had sent my regards to the old Major,
and asked if he had kept his promise to live there
always. The answer shocked me. He had not
kept his promise, the writer said, but he had gone
to live in a another and Better Country. His health
of late had not been strong, and a few weeks ago it
had become clear that he was fast going. His
last walk was out to the resting place of his little
love. As he grew worse and weaker he asked that
the rector be sent for. When he came, the Major
told him that he had long ago placed his hopes on
the Heavenly Father and tried to live as a child of
His, and—with his old time gentle hesitation—he
added, “as a poor unworthy child of His.”
But it was not for that he had sent for him, it was
this, and here the Major took from under his pillow
a letter addressed to baby’s parents, which
he asked the rector to deliver. It had been written
just after her death and was a simple request that
he might be buried by her side. One thing he
questioned the rector anxiously about: as to
whether in the Better Country we would know each other.
The letter was delivered and the next day baby’s
father and mother came to see her old friend.
He was fast going, and lay with his eyes closed.
Somehow, it seemed to cross his mind that they would
know, and as they were leaving, he said, “You
think I’ll know the little one? Oh, I hope
I will know her.” After he was buried, adds
the writer, we found some of her broken toys in his
desk, and a list, written way back in the fall, of
Christmas gifts to buy for her.
Has he seen her again? It cannot be that the
loving Father has not taken this simple hearted of
His by the hand and led him to the little one who
went before. And that in this blessed Christmas
time, in that far off and better land, listening to
the songs of angels and gazing at the glories of a
brighter world, there walk, once more, hand in hand,
the Major and his Last Love.
OBSERVATIONS OF A RETIRED VETERAN V
The people are taking their vacation—an
imposing three-syllable name for a very tiny slice
of holiday taken off an immense lump of work.
Of all the impositions that I know, this vacation business,
in the way we take it, is greatest. Somehow,
by some inexplicable way, it has grown into a custom
with men who have business, to understand that a vacation
means two weeks, fourteen days, out of three hundred
and sixty-five, or one week out of every twenty-six.
And then back again to work. It is like taking
a poor devil out of a box once a year, and after giving
him a breath of fresh air, putting him back and letting
the lid down on him again. It is often said that
a thing is as free as air, but to a busy man the air
is anything but free. Whiskey, cigars, newspapers,
the church, the theatre are at hand and easy of access,
but the long, lazy, untrammelled breathing of fresh
