Читать книгу The Silent Readers: Sixth Reader - Albert Lindsay Rowland - Страница 11

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You should all begin reading at the same moment. Your teacher will time you and tell you how long it takes you to read this selection. But do not hurry, for you will be asked to tell the class the things you remember best.

Maybe you had a big brother or sister or cousin or aunt or uncle who, during the great war, worked under the Red Cross in France. If you did, he or she may have written home just such letters as this one, which a big sister wrote to her little brothers in America. As you read, see if you do not think she must be a very pleasant, friendly big sister, not only to her own little brothers, but also to the little French children.

Do you wish you had been born in France and that your names were Jean, and René, and Etienne instead of Bill and George Albert and Ben? And do you wish you wore black sateen aprons instead of woolly blue sweaters?

The reason I began to write you this letter is that yesterday afternoon I put on my hat and coat when I ought to have been working, and went to visit some French schools. I went with twenty fine people who all wore Red Cross uniforms.

The reason I went is very interesting. For three years, while all the men and the big boys in France have been fighting, their mothers and sisters and all the children whom they had to leave behind them have been getting poorer and thinner and hungrier. You see, since the men have gone to war there haven't been enough of them left to grow the wheat and run the machinery which makes the bread. Well, as I said, the mothers and the little children got thinner and poorer and hungrier, but the last thing of all that they gave up was a luncheon they served in the afternoon in the schools to the smallest and poorest children. It was such a little luncheon that they called it "the taste", but finally they had to give up even that; and then when the time came to eat, the children, who were just as brave as soldiers, had to pretend they weren't hungry at all. They went without that luncheon for a number of months, and then an American doctor decided that the boys and girls in that part of Paris must have that luncheon again. So the doctor rented a bakeshop and he got a ton of nice white American flour, and hundreds and hundreds of cans of American condensed milk, and a very great deal of sugar and some other things, and went to work making buns. And the reason I went to the schools yesterday was to help give out the buns and chocolate for the children's "taste".

I suppose you think that one bun and one piece of chocolate wasn't much—and we thought so too when we saw all those hungry little faces, and their little legs that looked quite hollow—but the children thought it was fine. They were so polite, boys! When we marched into their classrooms they all stood up and saluted us as if they had been soldiers. They showed us their copy books and told us what the lesson was. In one class the master himself was quite scared because he wanted to speak English to make us feel at home. But he made us a fine speech, saying how thankful they all were to their American friends for being so generous to them. He thanked us especially for thinking of the children and for trying to help them when their fathers were away fighting. Then he asked the boys whose fathers or brothers were in the war to raise their hands, and, do you know, almost every boy could raise his hand. They were proud to do it, too. Their hands went up quickly and some of them waved—as you do when you especially want the teacher to pay attention to you. The master asked the boys whose fathers would never come back to raise their hands, and there were so many of them that we could hardly bear to count them; and this time the hands went up very slowly and their faces were very, very sober.

In the first school we went to, the big hall was decorated with a long string of American flags. Every one was drawn very carefully, and then colored with crayons by the littlest children. There were paper chains, too, made out of red, white, and blue paper; and finally, when the buns came in, the baskets were all decorated with the American flag because the American people had given the bread.

The boys all marched into the hall in a long, long line, and, Bill and Junior and Ben, I was so afraid that there wouldn't be enough buns to go around! They marched up to the baskets, their little wooden shoes making a terrible clatter on the stone floor; and every boy got a bun in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other, and every boy said "Thank you" in French, very politely. I don't think even the smallest forgot that, though some of them were so excited that they couldn't march straight and some of them couldn't talk at all plainly, even in French. There was one time when I got very much excited myself. That was when one little boy, in a blue soldier suit just like his father's, said "Thank you" in English. I nearly dropped all the buns I had in my two hands, I was so surprised.

The Mayor of the district, who probably seemed like the President of the United States to most of the children, made a speech and told them how sorry the Americans had been that they couldn't have their lunch in the afternoon, and how the Americans wanted them to be strong and well and happy and had given them the buns and the chocolate to help, and he talked to them in such a pleasant voice and in such a loving sort of way, that when he said he wanted them to shout, "Vive l'Amerique!" which means, "Hurrah for the United States of America!" they shouted—really and truly shouted—just as if they'd been little American boys.

At the next school, we went to the building where the tiniest children of all learned their kindergarten games. They marched for us, and sang a little song about the good "Saint Christopher", who was kind to little children; and a little boy who had lost his mother and father in the war and who was really too little to understand, said a very polite speech to us and promised us that he and his little friends would always remember how kind the Americans had been to them. He was so tiny that he hid his head in the teacher's apron when he had finished.

Finally we went to the biggest school of all, and there we found a great hall filled with classes of little girls, all dressed in black, all looking so pale and thin and sad that we were glad to think that perhaps the buns and chocolates we had brought would—in a month or two—bring some color into their poor little faces, and perhaps even put some fat on their wrists and hands that were so thin they seemed like birds' claws. One of the older girls had made a fine big panel picture here showing the children eating their buns and chocolates and capering up and down just as I've seen somebody caper a bit when he was going to have—was it ice cream for Sunday dinner?

At the end, the nice old Mayor made another speech, in which he told us a little bit of how brave the children had been when they were hungry, and how glad he was that they were now going to have the American food, and then he thanked us all over again. So, then, one of the American doctors said that when we came over here to France with our men, our food, and our love, we weren't making gifts, we were just trying to pay the debt that America had owed to France since Lafayette and his men came across the sea to help us in our war. Then the doctor told us how the Arabs believe that people who once eat even a tiny piece of bread together will always be friends, so the little children and their teachers, and the nice old Mayor, and all the Americans from the Red Cross ate some of the American buns and—that is the end of the story!