BY ELENE FOSTER

The tramp, tramp of feet on a hard road; long lines of khaki figures moving over the browning grass of the parade ground; rows of faces, keen and alert, with that look in the eyes that one sees in LePage’s Jeanne d’Arc; the click, click of bullets from the distant rifle range blended with a chorus of deep voices near at hand singing “Over There”; a clear, blue sky, crisp autumn air and the sparkling waters of Lake Champlain—­that’s Plattsburg.

    (5)

    (Good Housekeeping)

    NEW ENGLAND MILL SLAVES

    BY MARY ALDEN HOPKINS

In the pale light of an early winter morning, while a flat, white moon awaited the dawn and wind-driven clouds flung faint scudding shadows across the snow, two little girls, cloaked, shawled, hooded out of all recognition, plodded heavily along a Vermont mountain road.  Each carried a dangling dinner pail.

    The road was lonely.  Once they passed a farmhouse, asleep save for a
    yellow light in a chamber.  Somewhere a cock crowed.  A dog barked in
    the faint distance.

Where the road ascended the mountain—­a narrow cut between dark, pointed firs and swaying white-limbed birches—­the way was slushy with melting snow.  The littler girl, half dozing along the accustomed way, slipped and slid into puddles.

At the top of the mountain the two children shrank back into their mufflers, before the sweep of the wet, chill wind; but the mill was in sight—­beyond the slope of bleak pastures outlined with stone walls—­sunk deep in the valley beside a rapid mountain stream, a dim bulk already glimmering with points of light.  Toward this the two little workwomen slopped along on squashy feet.

They were spinners.  One was fifteen.  She had worked three years.  The other was fourteen.  She had worked two years.  The terse record of the National Child Labor Committee lies before me, unsentimental, bare of comment: 

“They both get up at four fifteen A.M. and after breakfast start for the mill, arriving there in time not to be late, at six.  Their home is two and one-half miles from the mill.  Each earns three dollars a week—­So they cannot afford to ride.  The road is rough, and it is over the mountains.”

    (6)

    (Providence Journal)

    HOW TO SING THE NATIONAL SONGS

    To Interpret the Text Successfully the Singer Must Memorize,
    Visualize, Rhythmize, and Emphasize

    BY JOHN G. ARCHER