THE TORCH BEARER
“That light which has been given to me
I desire to pass undimmed to others!”
The voice which repeated this high desire, the purest the human heart
can know, was Jessica’s.
It was a voice which thrilled and trembled just as it had done over six
months before when, by the lakeside Council Fire, Morning-Glory had
given her girlish pledge to tend, even as her fathers and fathers’
fathers had tended, the sacred heart-fire of humanity—kernel of its
hearth fire, too—the love of man for man, the love of man for God.
That she _had_ been tending it in lowly places where, otherwise, that
flame would have been a feeble flicker, where in one case it would have
been hidden under the heavy bushel of a deaf ear and silent tongue in a
child’s head, was shown by the presence of four little girls whom she
had made happy once a week for three months, thus meeting one of the
requirements for gaining the highest rank among Camp Fire Girls.
This group of children, aged about eight or nine years, was known by the
beautiful name of a Bluebird Nest, called after the azure harbinger-bird
whose appearance in spring, as a great naturalist says, is the signal
for sky and earth to meet, as their hues do in his plumage, in other
words a call for them to cease their winter strife and prepare for
summer.
And these little human Bluebirds, now in the early spring of life, were
preparing for the summer of being Camp Fire Girls; that is three of them
were; the fourth, the deaf-and-dumb Rebecca of the city playground, was
so handicapped and retarded by her affliction that nobody could prophesy
what her future would be; suffice it that, at present, she was happy!
There was a sparkle in those patient, purple eyes of hers which held no
ray when the girls first saw her on the public playground, lacking a
little partner in the folk-dance. Of all the lights which the new Torch
Bearer, Jessica, whose Camp Fire name was Morning-Glory, might pass on
undimmed to others from the happy glow within herself and from the lamp
of those Ideals which, like a wise virgin of the parable, she kept
trimmed and burning, none would be more heavenly than that torch first
kindled in a dumb lamb’s heart.
“But, do you know, I don’t believe that little ’Becca is going to be
dumb always,” remarked Mŭnkwŏn, Arline, arching the future with her
rainbow symbol, when the ceremony of initiating one member of the
Morning-Glory Camp Fire into the highest rank was over, when the girls
were seated in a semicircle on the floor, before a blazing Council Fire.
“You may remember,” addressing the crescent company, “how the playground
teacher said that, once, when the children were all yelling ‘Swing!
Swing!’ at the tops of their voices—and those foreign children can
scream both in their own language and every other—Rebecca seemed to
catch some sound or vibration and said ‘swing’ plainly, too!”
“Oh! even if she remains deaf, she can, no doubt, be taught to speak,
later on, by means of the oral method or lip-reading,” suggested
Gheezies, the Guardian of the Camp Fire.
“Yes,” Arline spoke passionately, “this evening, before the signal came
for us to march in, and take our places round the Council Fire, I knelt
beside her for five minutes saying ‘Glory’ over and over, forming it
_big_, with my lips close to her face; I want that to be the first word
she says, if she ever does begin to speak, in honor of Welatáwesit, our
Morning-Glory,” with a moist glance at Jessica, “who rescued her from
drowning and kept the torch of life in her little body!”
“Yes, and who first:
“Called the Bluebird through her window
To sing its song within that dumb heart,”
quoted Gheezies. “Does Mŭnkwŏn remember the blank verse effusion in
which she celebrated that playground incident?”
“Of course I do! But nobody has yet got sufficient poetic steam
up”—Arline laughed—“as to write a really dramatic poem telling how she
was saved from drowning in two feet and a half of water by a Camp Fire
Girl and Eagle Scout.”
“Oh! we’ll leave that to the future airy flights of Kask, the Blue
Heron,” chimed in Betty, smiling at Olive who sat facing her in this
Council Fire crescent, grouped indoors upon a January night, around a
ruddy hearth. “Blue Heron will surely try out her poetic pin-feathers,
some day; it was the fear of losing them, I think, of being reduced to
hissing instead of hooting, like that poor captive owl, which first
induced _her_ to become a Camp Fire Girl.”
“That may be—partly!” laughed Olive. “But all last summer while we were
camping on those white, fairy Sugarloaf dunes, I was too much taken up
with exercising my wings in other directions to think about little
rhyming flights. And”—gasping slightly—“since we’ve been back in the
city I’ve had plenty to do, too—with my father’s marriage and all that!”
Blue Heron, as she gazed into the fire, at the red velvet of its
blazing, hickory back-log, was thinking dreamily of the pure wing-power
for which she had prayed on that evening, more than six months before,
when she sat, as a spectator, at a lakeside Council Fire, that she might
soar into likeness to her mother. Of late, with a few human tumbles, she
had been winging upward on pinions of tact and unselfishness that
brooded gracefully over the crisis in her home life when her father gave
a new mistress to the household where she had hoped to reign in that
mother’s stead. Thus she helped Sybil to adjust herself, too.
In consequence, Olive already loved her stepmother whom, prior to the
marriage, she hardly knew, all the more because the new wife evinced a
cordial desire that Cousin Anne and Jessica should remain members of the
family even after the latter graduated from high school, that is if the
education in art which she was to pay for out of her wonderfully
discovered legacy could be carried on in the city of Clevedon.
And what was the new Torch Bearer, who had been initiated as a Fire
Maker a little over six months before, thinking of as she, too, gazed
into the velvety red of blazing hickory and birch logs, topped by a blue
crest of rippling flame, a delicate fluorescence?
Chiefly she, Morning-Glory, was dwelling on that old, saving deed of her
great-grandfather’s which had arisen out of the past to bless her (to
justify the feeling of her lonely hours that, somehow, in some way, he
lived to companion her), to enable her to follow in her father’s
footsteps, by and by, as a designer of stained-glass glories, this
bringing her in feeling nearer to him, too.
Already Jessica, or Welatáwesit, wore upon her fringed sleeve a Shuta
National honor (Shuta meaning to create) awarded her by the highest
council of the Camp Fire Girls for her design—crudely imperfect as
yet—for a beautiful stained-glass window, representing the figure and
ideals of a Camp Fire Girl. A window which, at some future golden date,
might filter and glorify the daylight as it streamed into a National
Temple dedicated to American girlhood, to its desire to preserve a
romantic savor of its predecessor upon this soil, the Indian girlhood,
whose poetic folk-lore, dress and customs seemed in danger of vanishing
until the Camp Fire Girl stepped upon the scene to unite in her
captivating person the poetry of the past, the progress of the present!
From the honor emblem upon her khaki sleeve Jessica’s young gaze
wandered back to her beaded leather necklace and to the large silver
coin, stamped with a sunburst which she still, upon certain occasions,
wore round her neck, the ancient sun-dollar with her monogram minutely
engraved beneath the radiating rays, which had been so instrumental in
linking her with her ancestor’s life-saving deed.
“Won’t it go beautifully with your Torch Bearer’s pin which has a rising
sun as part of the design on it?” suggested Penelope who, to-night, as
she dreamed by the Council Fire in ceremonial dress which had a
“poetizing” effect on her, as Sally said, looked transformed from the
Penelope of the restless gate, creating a tingling atmosphere about her
that, according to Betty, could be felt a mile off.
“Yes, I feel like a true child of the Sun, wearing both of them! And
isn’t it a strange coincidence that the old coin found by a Camp Fire
Girl—or first spied by her—should be stamped with a sunburst?”
Morning-Glory fingered the sun-dollar, silver-gilt in the firelight. “I
have been reading up about Peruvian coinage,” she went on reflectively,
“and I find that the sunburst stamp with those funny little black dots
representing a grotesque sun-face in the center is a relic of the
sun-worship of the old Incas, former inhabitants of Peru, who carved the
sun’s face on everything.”
“I’ll never forget that lawyer’s expression when it dawned on him that
the date of this year and a girl’s initials on the sun-dollar, which at
first he regarded as an insult to its stately inscription and ancient
stamp, were actually proving a clue for him to find an heir to one of
the old legacies for which he was looking up claimants.” This amused
remark came from Gheezies, Guardian of the Fire, who sat on the right of
the blazing logs. “I’m sure that Morning-Glory will go down to history
in that part of the country as the heroine in the case of the most
remarkable legacy that ever a girl fell heir to!”
“Yes, and think of the wild excitement of the Twin-Light Tribe over
having such a dramatic scene take place at their party!” gasped Ruth
Marley, whose Camp Fire name signified Music and who had the G clef in
her head-band. “Why! their Christmas letter to us was full of it. I’d
like to hear that sisterly epistle again.”
“So would I! And I! And I! Also the letter from Captain Andy—our
‘Standing Tall’—in which he speaks of the present he’s sending us!” came
in tones of laughter from one and another of the fourteen beaded maidens
seated round the Council Fire, while the four Bluebirds, nestling near,
played happily with their dolls, which Morning-Glory, in her one
afternoon a week spent with them in the room of a Children’s Friend
Society, had taught them how to dress.
“Oh! Captain Andy used to feel badly because we had no bows and arrows
last summer (we’ll have to practice archery before we ever camp out with
him again) to go with our Indian dress and not even a harpoon, as he
used to say jokingly, in case ‘a school of blackfish came in,’” laughed
Sesooā. “And so he’s sending us a spear, the sword of a swordfish which
he killed himself and polished up—I mean he polished the sword and
_polished off_ the poor fish. He says we can harpoon hearts with it!”
“It will go well with our painted ‘buffalo robe’ bearing the figure of a
Camp Fire Girl; we’ll hang it on the wall, then it will make our room
like an Indian lodge, with hunting weapons,” romanced Morning-Glory,
gazing round the pretty, firelit meeting-room in the Guardian’s house,
dedicated to the use of the Morning-Glory Camp Fire which bore none but
the slenderest resemblance to a red man’s lodge, with its pretty
window-curtains made, embroidered and hung by the girls’ own hands, its
leather table-cover, sofa pillows and Record Book bound in sheepskin.
Into almost every article in that room, with the bare exception of the
furniture, had been woven the personality of some member of the
Morning-Glory Tribe who met there, who had helped to make or decorate
it—that girlish tribe being likewise responsible for keeping the room
swept, garnished and in order.
“There—there is another letter which I want to read to you, as it’s
connected with our camping days—and with the worst adventure I ever had
in my life!” went on Jessica breathlessly, after a minute or two. “Or,
rather, I think I’ll let Gheezies, our Guardian, read it!” The girl’s
face was “swept,” now, by a variety of expressions ranging from a sunny
gust of amusement to the dark semblance of a shudder wafted by memory
across its buoyant brightness.
Gheezies, holding a candle near to the page, smudged, blurred and
strangely covered with a scrawl of handwriting, read slowly and with
difficulty, mentally supplying punctuation and other conventional marks:
“CHÈRE MAD’SELLE, DEAR FRIEN’:
“It gif me grate plaisir to rote you dese line. Yes’day w’en I
go on top o’ post-office w’at you t’ink I see, heem littel box.
Ciel! I am so glad I feel lak’ cry. Ach! la jolie montre—de
silvare—I haf not de word—I am so fool....”
Here the queer scrawl broke off indefinitely.
Underneath the letter was continued, as follows, in a fine bold hand
over several pages:
“Toiney sent me this ‘specimen scribble’ in which he has tried
to thank you for the silver watch you sent him in memory of the
day when he pulled you out of a patch of horrible quicksands
while I revolved on one leg, unable to get to you.
“I’m so glad you remembered him with it, at Christmas—the watch
came out of the legacy, I suppose—and you may bet he was tickled
when he went ‘on top of post-office,’ meaning into it, and was
presented with the registered box! I don’t know how he got so
far with his letter, some one must have helped him, for I didn’t
think he knew enough English to say Boo! straight....”
Here the reading was interrupted by a gasp that was almost a sob from
Jessica; straight English had not been necessary to translate the fire
of the woodsman’s arm which forced the “devil quicksands” to relax their
sucking grip upon her body.
“He sent me the letter, asking me to fix it up with lots of
_paint_—my expression, of course—excuse slang!...”
“That means all the nice speeches you can think of!” interjected
Penelope explanatorily.
“So here goes; I enclose ’dese line’ from him and add my
comments—and sundries!
“I have been plugging away for dear life at Tech and working
through the Christmas holidays. It means a stiff grind for the
next four years if I’m to take my B.C.E. degree—Bachelor of
Civil Engineering—at the end of that time.
“Have you decided yet in what School of Design you’re going to
learn how to paint Saints’ heads on glass? More power to the
legacy!
“Gracious! when I think of how that ripping sou’westerly squall
which swept you in the dory on to the Neck made the sand-hill
‘cough up’ that old sun-dollar and of all that it brought you, I
want to yell and yell, like a madman. I’ll wager that Kenjo
does, too! And didn’t the Astronomer play up at the party when
he thought you were going to faint or cry? Good for Tenderfoot
Tommy!
“Thank you for the help which you Camp Fire Girls are giving us
by selling tickets for our big Boy Scout Rally which takes place
this month!
“Hoping to see you soon,
“Your friend,
MILES STACKPOLE.”
“That’s a nice letter from the Eagle Scout,” commented Gheezies, handing
the sheets back to Morning-Glory, “and Toiney’s mongrel scrawl is worth
keeping. Now for the best letter of all which I have kept for the last
on this our first meeting after Christmas when, as we agreed, we are
talking over our camping experiences, remembering absent friends and
dwelling on the messages they sent us! This is from Kitty—Kitty Sill—our
Camp Fire Sister!” The Guardian jubilantly waved an envelope. “In it she
tells of how she, little chicken-hearted, orchard Kitty, who——”
“Who, as Captain Andy used to say, was ‘shy as a long-billed curlew’!”
interjected Olive in low, laughing tones. “I beg your pardon, Gheezies,
for interrupting!”
“Yes, how ‘shy’ Kitty has been instrumental in starting another Camp
Fire group among the girls of her scattered neighborhood and has induced
their school-teacher to act as Guardian. Now, what do you suppose
they’re going to call this new Camp Fire?”
“’Twouldn’t be Kitty if it wasn’t original,” chuckled Morning-Glory.
“It’s altogether too bad that they can’t enroll Mary-Jane Peg!”
“They’ve decided to call it the Five-Smoke Camp Fire after the old
farmhouse in which Kitty lives because that house is still sometimes
described in their locality as the house of the big chimney or the farm
of the five smokes owing, no doubt, to the fact that in early days after
the house was built about two hundred years ago, Kitty’s ancestors could
afford five fires going together, while other families of the settlers
had only one.”
“The ‘Five-Smoke Camp Fire’? Isn’t it a great name? A dandy name!” burst
from one and another of the crescent-group applaudingly.
“It is. And as there’s no smoke without fire, let us hope that it will
kindle a five-pointed blaze in the world in honor of Wohelo: Work,
Health, Love. Now, I’ll read you Kitty’s letter!
“You see, she says that they, the members of this new Camp Fire circle,
have just received their Charter from Headquarters,” added the Guardian
softly when the reading was finished. “It seems to me that it would draw
us near to them, to our Camp Fire Sisters everywhere, if we were to
unite in repeating the beautiful words of that Charter which hangs,
framed, upon our wall.”
“Yes! Oh, yes! Let us!” One girlish face after another was uplifted to a
glint of framed glass above them through which the leaping flame of
their Council Fire picked out, here and there, a colored capital.
Like a rolling wave that begins with a murmur and rises to a mountain,
their voices broke in unison upon the shores of the fire island:
“This is your Charter. Make it live,
And find here hidden within its page
The Deeper Meaning—
The right to join the Circle’s Sisterhood,
Your Hearts to beat in touch and tune with theirs;
The right to kindle at their Flaming Fire
Your own, and see within its Glow
The Spirit-Flame of Work, Love-ordered....”
Higher soared the crest of the Council Fire, illumining many a fair
young face, unlocking with its key of flame the circle of individual
hearts until, awed, it penetrated even to that hidden Light of Life in
which all were one, while there broke upon the illumination like a holy
challenge the crowning right for which the Camp Fire stands:
“The Right to live the Exultant Life
That grows akin to Nature’s Throbbing Heart;
The Right to dream, and dreaming,
Know the Deep, Primal Things,
The Soul of Beauty and the Heart of Truth.”
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Keel to Kite
How Oakley Rose Became a Naval Architect
By ISABEL HORNIBROOK
12mo Cloth Illustrated $1.50
[Illustration: image of book cover]
The story of an up-to-date boy who achieves his ambition against a
headwind of difficulty. Son of a Gloucester “skipper” lost on Georges,
he is brought up by his grandfather, and inheriting a keen love of
vessels, desires to become a naval architect. Obliged to leave high
school, he goes to work in an Essex shipyard, hoping to obtain a
practical knowledge of vessels. He studies naval architecture there in
rainy intervals when shipbuilding is impossible; takes a fishing trip to
Georges, and another, full of exciting adventure, to the halibut
fletching grounds off the coast of Labrador.
“Boys who delight in adventure, briskly told, will surely find
entertainment and profit in reading this wholesome and lively
story.”—_New York Examiner._
Camp and Trail
By ISABEL HORNIBROOK
12mo Cloth Illustrated $1.50
[Illustration: image of book cover]
A story for boys and girls who delight in adventure. Two English boys
with their friend, an American collegian, go into the woods of Maine to
hunt deer and moose. But they never kill wantonly or for mere sport—only
for food or in self-defence. They study the ways of the great game of
the woods, and breathe in health, inspiration and noble thoughts with
the odor of the pines and the air of lake and mountain.
For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the
publishers
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JEAN CABOT SERIES
By GERTRUDE FISHER SCOTT
Illustrated by Arthur O. Scott
12mo Cloth
Price, Net, $1.00 each Postpaid, $1.10
JEAN CABOT AT ASHTON
[Illustration: image of book cover]
Here is the “real thing” in a girl’s college story. Older authors can
invent situations and supply excellently written general delineations of
character, but all lack the vital touch of this work of a bright young
recent graduate of a well-known college for women, who has lost none of
the enthusiasm felt as a student. Every activity of a popular girl’s
first year is woven into a narrative, photographic in its description of
a life that calls into play most attractive qualities, while at the same
time severely testing both character and ability.
JEAN CABOT IN THE BRITISH ISLES
This is a college story, although dealing with a summer vacation, and
full of college spirit. It begins with a Yale-Harvard boat race at New
London, but soon Jean and her room-mate sail for Great Britain under the
chaperonage of Miss Hooper, a favorite member of the faculty at Ashton
College. Their trip is full of the delight that comes to the traveler
first seeing the countries forming “our old home.”
JEAN CABOT IN CAP AND GOWN
Jean Cabot is a superb young woman, physically and mentally, but
thoroughly human and thus favored with many warm friendships. Her final
year at Ashton College is the culmination of a course in which study,
sport and exercise, and social matters have been well balanced.
JEAN CABOT AT THE HOUSE WITH THE BLUE SHUTTERS
Such a group as Jean and her most intimate friends could not scatter at
once, as do most college companions after graduation, and six of them
under the chaperonage of a married older graduate and member of the same
sorority spend a most eventful summer in a historic farm-house in Maine.
For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the
publishers
Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Boston