Puslapio vaizdai
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when the air gets bad. The wee birds can no stand the bad air. He's gone the noo, and it's no much harm for the present.'

Campbell, thinking no more of the bird for the moment, set to work examining the timbers for signs of damage from the blow.' He ordered some adjustments and repairs here and there, and then sat down on a box to fill in a report blank. A soldier picked up the empty cage and set it on the sergeant's box.

Gazing absently at it for a moment, Campbell sprang to his feet with an exclamation. 'Lloyd,' he called to a man working near him. 'Drop yer wark and double up to the nearest infantry officer ye can find in the trenches above. Tell him and mind ye get it straight tell him the canary assigned to this gallery has escaped, and I be fearin''t will settle in No Man's Land. Jump to it, lad!'

As the man hurriedly ascended the shaft, the sergeant wrote two notes and dispatched them by other messengers to the infantry officers holding the trenches above. As he wrote he cursed himself for his stupidity. Why had he not realized at once that the Germans

expert as they were in mining would deduce from the presence of the canary that the carefully concealed mining operations were in progress? How fortunate, he thought, that there were yet a few hours of darkness. He thought the bird would not sing in the dark. Would the bird go to the German trenches? Thoughts raced through the brain of the anxious man.

Above, Lloyd had found a major of infantry, and halted that astonished officer. From Sergeant Campbell to the nearest infantry officer, sir,' he began, mumbling the official message form. 'Bill's escaped!' Seeing nothing but blank amazement in the officer's face, he began afresh. 'Bill, our canary

in Gallery 47, has got away. The sergeant thinks he might give the game away to the Germans, sir.'

The major quickly grasped the situation. First acknowledging the message, he strode away to take steps in the matter. At the next turn of the trench he met the colonel commanding the sector, who was making a tour of inspection. The major stopped him and hurriedly explained matters. The colonel immediately sent messages to subordinates, and little Bill soon became an object of great interest to the officers and men of two battalions. Men peered anxiously about the corners of the trenches. Scouts and patrols in No Man's Land attempted the almost hopeless task of searching for Bill.

In a zealous search for the bird, Sergeant Lacy of the Scouts crawled nearly to the German wire. The ground was under fire, and he ran more risk than he had in winning his D.C.M. at Mt. Sorrel. On his return he was very impolite to a facetious Irishman, who suggested that he go again after Bill and take a handful of salt.

As the eastern sky behind the German trenches turned from blue to gray, eager eyes scanned the ground between the lines. Men were more than usually alert in observation of the German trenches. Fritz must have wondered at the reckless expenditure of ammunition that met every attempt on his part to use a periscope to observe the ground. The appearance of one was the signal for a fusillade. Men were detailed to keep telescopes and fieldglasses directed on the German trenches and report every attempt at observation. Every ear was listening for the dreaded chirp. One song in greeting of the approaching day, and the harm would be done.

A bomber, at his post near the head of a sap, glanced over the ground with a field-glass. His heart leaped as he

spied a downy ball of yellow perched on the shell-shattered stump of a bush. With astonishing swiftness the news spread through the trench. Without waiting for orders men fired their rifles at the bird. A military rifle is designed to hit large objects at great distances, and is a poor tool to hit small objects close by. Poor Bill, too inexperienced to be alarmed, sat quietly preening and dressing his feathers, quite unconscious of his notoriety. The increasing fire and signs of activity, coming at the favorite attacking hour of dawn, alarmed the Germans. Although it was nearly daylight, a flaring rocket went aloft from their trench. It burst and set adrift the familiar display of red and green lights, now pale and sickly looking in the morning light. Before they reached the ground, Fritz's distant artillery responded sympathetically. The rifle-practice at the bird was continued under a rapidly increasing 'strafe.'

Impatient officers directed the efforts to destroy the tell-tale bird, but rifle-fire proved ineffectual. Bombers were trying to reach the bush with their grenades.

'Lord love a poleeceman!' shouted a cockney, pulling the pin from a bomb. "Ere yer hare. 'It the bloomin' bird and get a V.C.'

Absorbed in the enjoyment of his joke, he continued to hold the foursecond bomb. A shout from his comrades warned him to throw it, just in time for it to burst outside the trench.

Several hundred rounds of ammunition expended had only caused Bill to hop from branch to branch, and look reproachful at the interruption to his morning toilet. A bullet clipped a twig close to him. A machine-gun barked away, its bullets enveloping the bush in a cloud of chalk. Bill merely circled about the bush and relighted, to the exasperation of the officers. Settled

once more, he ruffled his feathers in annoyance, and began a search for possible worms about the bush.

As the rattle of small arms continued, a sergeant, in charge of a Stokesgun crew, begged an officer for a chance to try his weapon. The officer, amused at the contrast between the tiny bird and the deadly, thirty-yards destructive radius of the Stokes projectile, smilingly assented.

The gun was carefully plumbed and sighted. The sergeant had cut a special fuse for so short a range. With one of his gunners he awaited the result of a volley of bombs just thrown. As the smoke cleared, Bill was seen to make another of his circular flights and settle down again.

'Now!' said the sergeant.

The gunner held the long, deadly cylinder over the mouth of the mortar, and dropped it in. There was the usual muffled report of the propelling charge, sounding like a fire-cracker exploding in an iron pipe, followed by the swish of the returning projectile as it shot out of the mouth of the gun, and went hurtling into the air. Eager eyes followed its course as it mounted, spinning end over end. Its force expended, it fell earthward with ever-increasing speed. The fuse was well timed. As the heavy bomb struck the earth nearby, the now cautious bird poised himself for flight, but too late. The vicious crash of the explosion swept bomb, bird, and bush into the limbo of forgotten things.

At the mouth of the mine the men still piled the endless stream of chalk bags in preparation for the day that would see even the scene of the incident blown away.

Down in the mine the big Scotch sergeant drew a small, yellow feather from the empty cage, and thoughtfully laid it away in his pay-book beside the sprig of heather he carried there.

EARTH UPON EARTH

A MEDIEVAL POEM REVISED

BY LAURA A. HIBBARD

EARTH upon earth hath woefully wrought; Now earth bringeth earth to nought;

For earth on earth hath sought

How earth to ruin be brought.

Earth sendeth on earth the dearth
Of exquisite youth and mirth,
Starving the fire on the hearth,

Cheating new life of birth.

Earth winneth on earth but power

To curse the final hour

When earth by its grief will cower

And gaze on its desolate dower.

Earth turneth from earth sad eyes

Unready to be wise;

Earth, sickened for holy skies,

Remembereth Paradise.

SCIENCE IN THE HUMANITIES

BY ELLWOOD HENDRICK

I

IN mediæval days, when ecclesiasticism ruled, there were venturesome spirits who held that there might be truth without dogma. They sought to discover from the literature and life of Greece and Rome those facts of human nature which were available, and yet were wholly removed by their antiquity from the speculations of dogma and the dangers of heresy. These fields of research became known in time as the Humanities, and as such they are known to-day. The subject includes, not only Greek and Latin literature, but the general domains of philology, history, and archæology. The habits of Science have aided in the organization, the thoroughness, and the order of these studies; but I make bold to postulate that Science has not yet developed sufficiently to be classed among the Humanities. It has been a servant, but not a companion of the temple.

Science has accomplished miracles of research in regard to human comfort and well-being, but despite the contributions of psychology and of social and political inquiry, it has not yet done its part in teaching us to understand one another better. Its language is definite, distinct, mathematical, and unconscionably ugly. If it is spoken in the presence of the uninformed, they hasten away or they strive to change the subject. It is not inviting, it is difficult to learn; and yet, once we have mastered it, we find it devoid of all refinement. Whoever has a fair reading

knowledge of any of the major living languages can readily translate a scientific book from it into his mother tongue. Even to write a scientific work in a foreign language does not require very much greater facility.

This is not the case with the literature of the Humanities, which touches all the arts. It is fortunate that those who hold to the mechanistic theory of life are full of enthusiasm and believe seriously in the tenets of their creed, for they are under obligation to explain the phenomenon of personality. If this be due to reactions within the mind, qualified by its physical and chemical structure, including the action-patterns there recorded by processes of photo-chemistry, the doctrine must be set forth in other than technical language. To do this will require an achievement in the art of scientific literature which has not yet been generally attained. The refinements of speech which indicate personality are not present in the abstract language of Science.

It has been said that it makes but little difference what one believes: it is how he believes, that is far more important. We may say that this has to do with the art of living. And again, it might be maintained that it is what a man says rather than how he says it that determines whether his utterances shall be heard or read, and remembered. Language, as we have observed before, is a vehicle of intellectual traffic. Its business is to carry ideas, mental concepts, information, and, at times,

the truth. It is a clumsy invention, its steering apparatus is very defective, and with the greatest caution it often carries us along the paths of error. This is not wholly to be avoided by precision. There is always the receiving mind; and the purpose of language is not fulfilled until the receiving mind has accepted and placed in storage in its proper compartment of the brain the bundle of thought addressed to it. Meticulous precision often misdirects the bundle.

The other day Professor Simkhovitch showed me a Chinese painting made in the eleventh century, which impressed me very deeply. It was said of the artist who painted it that he depicted the souls of things. It was a simple landscape, with a little house in the foreground and beyond, a lake or an arm of the sea. Beyond and about this were mountains, and over the lake was a low fog. It was a little picture, the size of the leaf of an octavo book, taken from an album in some old collection. That is all I can say in describing it in detail, and yet it had a magic beauty, a beauty of the kind that imposes silence, that arouses a cosmic emotion and makes friends draw close together when they see it. There was not a single trick in the making of it to remind one of the painter, not a single stroke of the brush to call attention to the painting, but on the margin some owner wrote of the artist, centuries ago, 'He useth his inks as the Lord God useth his waters, neither of which have I the gift to understand.'

I have the faith to believe that there are these cosmic emotions awaiting us in Science as soon as we learn that it takes the soul of an artist to tell the truth, the whole truth, with all the facts correlated unto the truth. If you desire to tell me how much you know, you must tell it to me in words that I can understand. As soon as you use

VOL. 121 - NO. 5

expressions with which I am unfamiliar I cease to marvel at your wisdom, and begin to wonder whether or not you are practicing quackery. The whole armament of quackery consists in words and phrases that the listener does not understand. You must keep within my comprehension if you are to have good standing with me. My ignorance may be colossal,—indeed, I assure you that it is, but I hold that it does not accord with the graces of life to offend me because of it. We children of the earth have our weaknesses; we are not missing the mark when we assert that every one of us is, in one respect or another, feeble-minded. It is pathetic to consider how widely the field of our vision is covered with blind spots. That, perhaps, is why we are so sensitive. It is not given to us to look intimately into the consciousness of one another, and so we do not know where the blind spots and the blurred spots are. Therefore we must be simple in our speech. We never shall know all that goes on within the consciousness, even of those closest to us; but the key to understanding is simplicity.

What is simplicity to one is not simplicity to another, and yet the crossroads from achievement into the minds of our fellows must be maintained as well-beaten paths if Science is to enter into the daily life of the world. It is not childishness to speak in a language that a child can understand. It is art. If we leave the simplicity of art out of consideration when we say simple things, if we load our everyday speech with unnecessary technicalities, what medium shall we have when we want to explain something difficult? Then language will fail us. We may have the thoughts, but they will die within us.

Let us consider for a moment how much good thought dies. It is not alone by the fires of wrath that libraries, and storehouses of wisdom, and

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