CHAPTER I

WAYSIDE SKETCHES

In beginning on our journey we disregarded Horace Greeley's
advice and went east. True, the course of empires has ever been
Westward and the richest gold fields lie in that direction. But
the glamour which surrounds this land of "flowing gold" has
caused vast numbers to lose their interest in both worlds, until
they missed the joys in this and the radiant hope of that to
come.

"All that glitters is not gold,
Gilded tombs do worms infold."

The land of the rising sun is not less lovely than that of its
setting. There is a freshness and a parity in the early dawn not
found in the evening time, and the birds greet the purpling east
with their sweetest songs. No one may know how cheerful, how far
reaching, how thrilling the singing of birds may be unless he
has listened to them telling the gladness of the morning while
the last star melts in the glowing east.

Then, too, what a journey is this when we look forward to the
glad meeting with friends who knew the horrors of the World War
and whom a kind Providence permitted to return to their native
land. During those awful days spent in the halls of suffering
and death near Verdun there were found many golden chains of