Part 47

“All in, are you, my boy? Well, you just sit and rest yourself awhile. What do you think of our hut? Good place to rest? Well, that’s what we want it to be to you, Home. Just drop in here whenever you’re in town and want a place to rest or write, or a bite of something homelike to eat.”

He looked up to the broad shoulders in their well-fitting dark blue uniform, and into the kindly face of the gray-haired Colonel of the Salvation Army who happened to step in for a minute on business and had read the look on the lonesome boy’s face just in time to give a word of cheer. He could have thrown his arms around the man’s neck and kissed him if he only hadn’t been too shy. But in spite of the shyness he found himself talking with this fine strong man and telling him some of his disappointments and perplexities, and when the older man left him he was strengthened in spirit from the brief conversation. Somehow it didn’t look quite so black a prospect to have but one foot.

He read a magazine for a little while and then, drawn by the delicious odors, he went downstairs and had some coffee and doughnuts. He saw while he was eating that the front porch opened out of the big lower room and was all enclosed in glass and heated with radiators. A lot of fellows were sitting around there in easy-chairs, smoking, talking, one or two sleeping in their chairs or reading papers. It had a dim, quiet light, a good place to rest and think. He was more and more filled with wonder. Why did they do it? Not for money, for they charged hardly enough to pay for the materials in the food they sold, and he knew by experience that when one had no money one could buy of them just the same if one were in need.

Later in the evening he took out the little card again and looked up the other address. He wanted one of those clean, sweet beds that he had been hearing about, that one could get for only a quarter a night, with all the shower-bath you wanted thrown in. So he went out again and found his way down to Forty-first Street.

There was something homelike about the very atmosphere as he entered the little office room and looked about him. Beyond, through an open door he could see a great red brick fireplace with a fire blazing cheerfully and a few fellows sitting about reading and playing checkers. Everybody looked as if they felt at home.

When he signed his name in the big register book the young woman behind the desk who wore an overseas uniform glanced at his signature and then looked up as if she were welcoming an old friend:

“There’s a telegram here for you,” she said pleasantly. “It came last night and we tried to locate you at the camp but did not succeed. One of our girls went over to camp this afternoon, but they said you were gone on a furlough, so we hoped you would turn up.”

She handed over the telegram and he took it in wonder. Who would send him a telegram? And here of all places! Why, how would anybody know he would be here? He was so excited his crutch trembled under his arm as he tore open the envelope and read:

“Dear Billy (It was a regular letter!): “I am leaving to-night for New York. Will meet you at Salvation Hostel day after to-morrow morning. What is a foot more or less? Can’t I be hands and feet for you the rest of your life? I’m proud, proud, proud of you!

Signed “Jean”

He found great tears coming into his eyes and his throat was full of them, too. It didn’t matter if that Salvation Army lassie behind the counter did see them roll down his cheeks. He didn’t care. She would understand anyway, and he laughed out loud in his joy and relief, the first joy, the first relief since he was hurt!

Some one else was coming in the door, another fellow maybe, but the lassie opened a door in the desk and drew him behind the counter in a shaded corner where no one would notice and brought him a cup of tea, which she said was all they had around to eat just then. She didn’t pay any attention to him till he got his equilibrium again.

She was the kind of woman one feels is a natural-born mother. In fact, the fellows were always asking her wistfully: “May we call you Mother?” Young enough to understand and enter into their joys and sorrows, yet old enough to be wise and sweet and true. She mothered every boy that came.

A sailor boy once asked if he might bring his girl to see her. He said he wanted her to see her so she could tell his mother about her.

“But can’t you tell her about your girl?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, but I want you to tell her.” he said. “You see, whatever you say mother’ll know is true.”

So presently she turned to this lonely boy and took him upstairs through the pleasant upper room with its piano and games, its sun parlor over the street, lined with trailing ferns, with cheery canaries in swinging tasseled cages, who looked fully as happy and at home as did the soldier boys who were sitting about comfortably reading. She found him a room with only one other bunk in it. Nice white beds with springs like air and mattresses like down. She showed him where the shower-baths were, and with a kindly good-night left him. He almost wanted to ask her to kiss him good-night, so much like his own mother she seemed.

Before he got into that white bed he knelt beside it, all clean and comfortable and happy like a little child that had wandered a long way from home and got back again, and he told God he was sorry and ashamed for all the way he had doubted, and sinned, and he wanted to live a new life and be good. Then he lay down to sleep. To-morrow morning Jean would be there. And she didn’t mind about the foot! She didn’t mind! How wonderful!

And then he had a belated memory of the little Salvation Army lassie on the wharf who had brought all this about, and he closed his eyes and murmured out loud to the clean, white walls: “God bless her! Oh, God bless her!”

This is only one of the many stories that might be told about the boys who have been helped by the various activities of the Salvation Army, both at home and abroad.

It would be well worth one’s while to visit their Brooklyn Hospital and their New York Hospital and all their other wonderful institutions. In several of them are many little children, some mere infants, belonging to soldiers and sailors away in the war. In some instances the mother is dead, or has to work. If she so desires she is given work in the institution, which is like a real home, and allowed to be with her child and care for it. Where both mother and father are dead the child remains for six years or until a home elsewhere is provided for it. Here the little ones are well cared for, not in the ordinary sense of an institution, but as a child would be cared for in a home, with beauty and love, and pleasure mingling with the food and shelter and raiment that is usually supplied in an institution. These children are prettily, though simply, dressed and not in uniform; with dainty bits of color in hair ribbon, collar, necktie or frock; the babies have wee pink and blue wool caps and sacks like any beloved little mites, they ride around on Kiddie Cars, play with doll houses and have a fine Kindergarten teacher to guide their young minds, and the best of hospital service when they are ailing. But that is another story, and there are yet many of them. If everybody could see the beautiful life-size painting of Christ blessing the little children which is painted right on the very wall and blended into the tinting, they could better comprehend the spirit which pervades this lovely home.

The New York Hospital, which has just been rebuilt and refurnished with all the latest appliances, is in charge of a devoted woman physician, who has given her life to healing, and has at the head of its Board one of the most noted surgeons in the city, who gives his services free, and boasts that he enjoys it best of all his work. Here those of small means or of no means at all, especially those belonging to soldiers and sailors, may find healing of the wisest and most expert kind, in cheery, airy, sanitary and beautiful rooms. But here, too, to understand, one must see. Just a peep into one of those dainty white rooms would rest a poor sick soul; just a glance at the room full of tiny white basket cribs with dainty blue satin-bound blankets—real wool blankets—and white spreads, would convince one.

And what one sees in New York in the line of such activities is duplicated in most of the other large cities of the United States.

Not the least of the Salvation Army service for the returning soldiers is the work that is done on the docks by the lassies meeting returning troop ships. They send telegrams free, not C.O.D., for them, give the men stamped postal cards, hunt up relatives, answer questions, and give them chocolate while they wait for the inevitable roll call before they can entrain. Often these girls will sit up half the night after having met boats nearly all day, to get the telegrams all off that night. It is interesting to note that on one single day, April 20th, 1919, the Salvation Army Headquarters in New York sent 2900 such free telegrams for returning soldiers.

The other day the father of a soldier came to Headquarters with an anxious face, after a certain unit from overseas had returned. It was the unit in which his boy had gone to France, but he had written saying he was in the hospital without stating what was the matter or how serious his wound. No further word had been received and the father and mother were frenzied with grief. They had tried in every way to get information but could find out nothing. The Salvation Army went to work on the telephone and in a short time were able to locate the missing boy in a Casual Company soon to return, and to report to his anxious father that he was recovering rapidly.

Another soldier arrived in New York and sent a Salvation Army telegram to his father and mother in California who had previously received notification that he was dead. A telegram came back to the Salvation Army almost at once from the West stating this fact and begging some one to go to the camp where the boy’s Casual Company was located and find out if he were really living. One of the girls from the office went over to the Debarkation Hospital immediately and saw the boy, and was able to telegraph to his parents that he was perfectly recovered and only awaiting transportation to California. He was overjoyed to see someone who had heard from his parents.

A portion of one troop ship had been reserved for soldiers having influenza. These men were kept on board long after all the others had left the ship. A Salvation Army worker seeing them with the white masks over their faces went on board and served them with chocolate, distributing post cards and telegraph blanks. When she was leaving the ship a Captain said to her rather brusquely: “Don’t you realize that you have done a foolish thing? Those men have influenza and your serving them might mean your death!”

Looking up into the man’s eyes the Salvationist said: “I am ready to die if God sees fit to call me.”