[Illustration:  “The boys call her ’The Woman with Sandwiches and Sympathy.’”]

And as we knelt in prayer together there in the hut and I arose to clasp his hand in sympathy, I knew that through service there in France, through service to your sons, mothers and fathers of America, this brave man, as well as his wife, were solacing their grief.  They were conquering sorrow in service, thank God.

Yes, there are Silhouettes of Sorrow, but these silhouettes always have back of them the gold of a new dawn of hope.  They are black silhouettes, but they have a glorious background of sunrise and hope.  I tell of no sorrows here that are not triumphant sorrows, such as will hearten the whole world to bear its sorrow well when it comes, pray God.

Up at ——­ on the beautiful Loire is my friend the secretary.  It is a humble position, and there are not many soldiers there, but he is serving and brothering, tenderly and faithfully, the few that are there.  No one would ever think of him as a hero, but I do.  He, too, is a hero who is conquering sorrow in service.

His only daughter had been accepted for Y. M. C. A. service in France.  She was all he had.  He was a minister at home, and had given up his church for the duration of the war.  Both were looking forward with keen anticipation to her coming to France.  Then came the cable of her death.

I was there, the morning it arrived, to preach for him.  He said no word to me about the blow.  We went on with the service as usual.  I noticed that no hymns had been selected, and that things were not in very good order for the service.  I was a little annoyed at this, but I am thankful with all my heart this day that I said nothing.  I had decided in my heart that he was not a very efficient religious director until I heard the next day.

When I asked him why he had not told me, he said a characteristic thing:  “I didn’t want to spoil the service.  I thought I would keep my grief in my own heart and fight it out alone.”

And fight it out he did.  Letters kept coming for several weeks after the cable, letters full of girlish hope about France, and full of joy at the thoughts of seeing “daddy” soon.  This was the hardest of all.  He could not tear up those precious letters.  Her last words and thoughts were treasures; all that he had left; but they were spear-thrusts of pain also.  But bravely he fought out his battle of grief, and tenderly he ministered, mothers and fathers of America, to your boys.  Is it any wonder that they loved him, that they went to him with their loneliness and their heartaches; is it any wonder that he understood all the troubles that they brought and that they bring to him?

And then there was the young secretary who had just landed in France.  It had been hard to leave home, especially hard to leave that little tot of a six-year-old girl, the apple of his eye.

Some of us who have such experiences will understand this story; some of us who remember what the parting from loved ones meant when we went to France.  One such I remember vividly.