EVERYBODY'S CHILDREN

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1180, 15 July 1911, Page 11

EVERYBODY'S CHILDREN

(By Dion Clayton Calthrop, in tho "Daily Mail.") It is a terribly sad thing, but thero are not enough toys in tho world to go round. In a world where the women do all tho serious work and tho men all the serious play, this lack of toys is sometimes a lamentable matter. And it is getting more and more difficult to get along without toys, and, besides that, they are getting horribly .expensive. Thero was a time when a man was content without a motor-car or a living machine. We have changed all that. To sue the good wife pack hor good man oil on Saturday with his box of golf toys, his picturesque dreeing up, his essential shoes, and his deliriously important fn-.si-ness is a sight for the gods. And tho gods, let me assure you, are not blind to of it all. What babies we are, and how glad I ani of it! I often imagine all tho littlo girls in the world (whose tall; is of clothes and food, and dolls, bless them) laughing behind their innocent fathers' backs. "Father," says Marie, "has gone fishing this morning." Thero is a twinkle, just a flash across tho dark eyes as Madge says: "My father has gone on board his yacht." "Such a fuss," says Marie, as she tucks Melpomene, the doll;.into bed. "Tackle, rods, basket, lunch, worms, and flies, and fuss. I often wonder "

A look, centuries old in significance, passes between .them. The very swing of their thin, black-stockinged legs seems to hold the secret ot the world's laughter. The very, impertinent toss of their curls lias a secret meaning. 'Die very colour of their sashes is a forecast of that time when they shall hold men in thrall and have real babies- of their own.

Enter, then, to them, Marie's mother. ''Father has telegraphed for his blue glasses; have you seen them, darling?"

Again, this time between mother and daughter, passes that secret look, that sign of complete understanding. Mario knows where the glasses are and goes demurely to fetch them. Demurely! The gods lend little tyinkling wings to her . heels, little daAcing imps to her eyes. Sedately, ahd with much arrangement of short petticoats, and with a sidelong glance to see-that Ihe coast, is clear, she seats herself on the tail of tho bannisters and slides downstairs. Yet these and their kind have plenty of toys. But there are some whose toys are only old cotton reels or headless rag dolls, and these they nurse fiercely in their pain. One does not think often of children, in hospitals. It is more convenient to us to admit (hey are'there or to place tho thought, aside. But there tliey are, nevertheless, rows of them in cots, wondering, most of them, why pain has fallen to their lot, and why, out of tho vast crowd in the dingy places tliey call homes, the hand of pain came down and picked them out. They should be everybody's children. A door swings open, and two nurses wrapped in white, their heads swaddled in white so that they look like little nuns, comc out carrying a stretcher. And on the l stretcher is a little white-faced *irl insensible. And tho smell of ether lies heavy on the air. In that room, swiftly, accurately,' delicately, a man, all in white, too, "has removed a limb. Better not go in there, yon who only know the world's smiles; it will give a sudden and vivid sense of the nearness of Life and Death. The glass cupboards shine with tho burnish on instrnmcnts; and tho little operating table brings a'lump into your throat, and the strong electric light above it and the awful things below make your heart beat faster. The room is all white, and steel, and' glass, and tho only colour is vivid crimson. Better to close the door. They are from every class, and brave, oh! brave beyond words. And some sit, tiny figures with faces of great beauty! and never speak, but only wonder. And some are bandaged and disfigured, but laugh and smile and tell the names of the flowers on the long tables and cheek the nurses. But always there is the. under-current,' She constant crying, the constant heart-