Sept. 31st, 1918.

DEAR DAD,

.      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

I USED to think in 1916 that this particular bit of France was no Garden of Eden, but I didn't have any idea then of what being desolate was like. Still I really think now that things are going very, very well, and that is a big help. I am afraid it is too late to mop things up this fall, but I think there is a sporting chance of something really big being pulled off any day at any one of a dozen places.

Have just come back from the line, and it sure is a pleasure to see our fellows everywhere and to know, as an impartial judge, that there are no better shock troops at the present date in any army. The best tribute to them that I know is that Australian soldiers, even close up to the line, almost always salute you. That is high praise indeed.

I have temporarily lost the old division, so that I can't yet get Helen's information, but when things quiet down a bit I will try to find them and no doubt will succeed.

Will be able to write oftener from now on, as I sure have been on the run for the last few days.

Am at present living in the box stall of a stable of what was once a beautiful château and am O.K., as the roof is whole over my bit of stable and there is any amount of wood about.

I was very glad to hear Mick is getting on so well. If only I was allowed to have a dog here he would be a great comfort and pleasure.

 

Oct. 2nd, 1918.

DEAR MOTHER,

IT seems almost impossible to write a letter at the present time and not tell anything about what is going on. But I really am afraid to say a single thing for two reasons: (1) The American censorship regulations are about eight times as severe as the British. (2) I am in a position where I know too much to trust myself to say much of anything.

I don't mind saying, however, that I can personally vouch for the fact that our boys put up a splendid scrap. And this information I did not get from official sources or hearsay.

I saw amidst many gruesome sights one thing which delighted me: An old British tank covered with Iron Crosses and German lettering saying that it had been captured from the British by a certain German Army. These letters were large and well blocked. Underneath written in chalk was

RETAKEN BY THE WAACS(16)

 

Oct. 3rd, 1918.

I HAVEN'T had a letter in a long while, but don't suppose it is to be expected with all that is going on in these parts. There is no two ways about it things are certainly going well. If only the Allies can keep up this terrific pressure, i.e., kill, wound and capture Germans at the rate they are doing, and at the same time gain enough ground to encourage our men and discourage the Hun, I really think the end may be sooner than we dream.

I would love to be able to tell you more about my weird job and just thousands of things I have seen, particularly a few days ago, but that will have to wait ....

I lost about the best friend I had here, a Southerner named Byrd, the other day. I find that when I am up with the battalions I like almost everybody.

 

Oct. 4th, 1918.

I CAN'T go to bed without saying, "How about it?" Isn't the news everywhere glorious? I really believe almost any day may see the old Hun crack somewhere, by that I mean absolutely crack, not only run, but surrender by battalions. Everybody is confident, but not foolishly so, except some of these old birds back where I am temporarily.

I don't think I ever wrote you that several weeks ago I had a chance to visit my favorite church.(17) It is absolutely intact, and never was such a marvel, as shells from an extremely big and extremely long-range gun (which I have seen) literally fell all around it, and they were so big that they would have crumpled that marvellous vaulting to dust.

I got two letters from you today. You certainly are a good guesser, as you were when I was out before.

Saw a pleasant sight today where the Huns had lived in some expensive vaults in a cemetery. I would have done that, but they had actually cut open the coffins and robbed the corpses of rings, etc.

 

Oct. 8th, 1918.

JUST a line tonight, as I am just about all in, and it really looks as if I am going to be able actually to get my clothes off and get a real night's sleep.

I am about to make the effort of my life and try to get at least one layer of dirt off before I turn in.

My one fear is that the politicians are going to make peace. It would be too terrible, now that we have really got them whipped. Nothing short of the unconditional surrender of the entire German Army will do now.

Tell Dad that I have finally succumbed after all, this time, to the charms of souvenir hunting. I have for him a short light German artillery rifle which I think will make the ideal sporting rifle. It is brand-new, right off the fire, so to speak, and I am going to stick to it if I have to throw away the rest of my kit.

 

Oct. 14th, 1918.

A LETTER from you in some mysterious manner eventually found its way to me, how I don't know, but the British mail can do anything. By a strange chance the boys(18) you are visiting are the very ones I am now with, and a fine lot they are. They have tackled several very, very tough bits and have hardly made even a small slip.

Have got a good billet in a town where the Hun was comfortably settled several days ago. He left a lot of good stuff behind and the town is fairly habitable, as he left in a great hurry. When we get the dead Huns cleared out (and horses) it will really be pretty decent. Saw with my own eyes a young woman with a Hun bayonet right through her heart. Looks like he is getting nasty again with civilians. If we can only keep going we will get some good towns for the winter and leave the desert behind.

This is a new phase of this war to me. Today I saw in a town, almost in the lines, civilians, who all three years had kept French flags hidden, putting them out. And our boys were wonderful. Just sort of doing odd jobs about the house to help out. More real happiness floating about than I have seen in a long time ....

I can't see anything to this peace talk. Nothing but a licking will take the fangs out of Prussia and they are getting it every day and will get more.

 

Nov. 8, 1918.

DEAR DAD,

As I write this Peace looks very near indeed. Of course any arrangements you make with regard to me are satisfactory, to say the least. As to what the immediate future may bring for us it is pure futile guesswork. I may go back soon after it is over or I may possibly have a great deal to do. I never felt so small in my life, and at that I have seen more per minute than one generally sees in a month.

Since we have been at rest I have been constantly on the move, making trips of a very interesting kind indeed. On each return I have expected my leave to see you ....

Shortly after the Armistice he got English leave and spent it in London with Father, Mother and his countless friends there. Those were happy days in what was truly Merrie England. No one was merrier than Cap. His happiness then as always was contagious. We all caught it. Moreover, wasn't the fighting over, men no longer killing each other, and Caspar actually alive? He seemed given back to us from the dead. His wounds seemed only signs of glory and he himself vibrant with life and fun. To have him return to France on November 24 seemed only an interruption in our new happiness that was to be continued indefinitely at home. Accordingly Father, Mother and Emily returned to America in time to give me a Merry Christmas.

Bonnétable, December 24, 1918.

DEAR MOTHER,

I HOPE you got my wire in time for Christmas.

I haven't written for a long time because up to now I have really thought that almost any day would see us on our way. Now I don't know! I think now that we may be here indefinitely. I am very much afraid that this Hdqs. will stay right here, and that as we ship a division home it will be replaced by a new one; in short we may be amongst the last to leave. But really there are so many rumors that it is hard to make anything out of it all.

After Christmas I threaten to write a real blue "grousing" letter, but maybe I will have cheered up by then. Let's hope so, at any rate, for surely anybody who is alive has no kick coming.

We are in a really charming little town here, but it sure is rural. Le Mans, the only suggestion of a town, is twenty-eight kilos away and that isn't much when you get there. In fact I have only been there twice.

The thing which really amuses me is that everybody now wishes they were back with the British! Some day I will tell you all about it, but the penalty for criticism is so severe that I will withhold for the present. I will say, however, that you have to do three hours' work here to accomplish what you formerly could in one hour.

Now that I have made up my mind that I am stuck here I will start and write two or three times a week.

Well, a Merry Christmas and I truly wish I were home. No letters so far.

CAP.

 

Le Mans, Jan. 23.

BURTON,
    Cincinnati, Ohio.

Well. Home soon.

BURTON.

 

Camp Mills, N.Y., Feb. 20.

C. H. BURTON,
     3730 Reading Road, Cincinnati, Ohio.

THANKS. Here about three days, then Upton about week. Demobilized. Then directly home. Everything fine.

CAP.

From Mills and Upton Caspar often got to New York and saw scores of friends there. For him they were divided into two classes ---those who had been in the War, "all the way in," as he expressed it, and those who had not. He preferred enemies to pacifists.

One story of him at this time illustrates his point of view. He decided to take the bull by the horns by calling at once on his only Austrian friend Mrs. Charles W. Short, the Countess Camilla Hoyos, who had become an American by marrying Charley Short. All her brothers, brothers-in-law and nephews had served Austria and Germany as either officers or diplomats. Caspar opened the conversation by saying, "Well, Camilla, how many of your family were killed?" When she replied, "None," Caspar said "Then, as far as I am concerned, the War is a complete failure. Whenever I was at the Front I went out gunning for Ludwig Karl or one of your tribe. They and others like them made this war, and now I find that they are all still alive to make another."

Nothing could be more characteristic of his frankness; yet his charm and the absence of any personal malice in him were so great that even after such talk he and Camilla remained intimate friends.

I was never in New York when he was there on leave; but I did get to Camp to see him. We had not been together for over four years, not since he left Boston for Newfoundland just after Christmas, 1914. We spent about twenty hours together at Upton and both talked steadily all the time, even in our sleep. There was plenty to talk about, both of the past and of the future. At first the present was an ample topic. I had never seen him look so sturdy. He was so broad-shouldered and muscular that for his height he looked top-heavy. I noticed at once that he took little, short breaths. I spoke of it, but he parried my question.

Then came my usual inquiry, "What are you going to do now?" Instead of evading it he replied, "I'm going home and settle down." He looked sheepish as he said it, and as I smiled he added, "You may not believe that, but I am through roaming. Home looks pretty good to me. This old war has knocked a lot of pep out of me, Spencey."

After that we settled down to talk seriously. He said that he had made the discovery in the Army that men would work for him and apparently enjoyed doing so. He had found that he liked working with men and saw no reason why he should not apply this newly discovered ability to get work out of men, to business. He said he hated the idea of routine office work as much as ever, but he felt that he would not have to do that in business any more than in the Army. I remember his words, "God has created sergeants to do all that."

I had never heard of such a job as he said he was going to find, but he talked convincingly and he afterwards did find just such a position. What made me happiest in all our conversation was his determination to live with Father and Mother. "I have not come through this show alive for nothing," he said. "I won't take a job that prevents me living with them."

When we undressed I demanded a private exhibition of his scars. While I examined his back he talked up all its "points of interest." Up by his neck, almost on the spine, there was a livid blue hole, where the bulk of the junk in his left lung had gone in. To illustrate what that was probably like he had me feel a loose piece of metal under the skin, just below his shoulder blade. It felt like a loose key in one's pocket. I told him he must have it out at once. As usual when I gave orders he told me to mind my own business, that it was his back and his "war souvenir." He didn't want his discharge delayed by another operation. He said he would have it taken out as soon as he was a civilian again. That he did not do at once. Soon it migrated from the surface. 1 have often wondered if it travelled to his heart. It was like Cap to wear his medals out of sight. Had it been taken out then, when it was near the surface, it would have left a white cruciform scar, like the others that ornamented his back. I told him they looked like the crosses chalked on the shutter in Joe Jefferson's "Rip Van Winkle" to show for how many drinks he owed. Then as I looked at those crosses, I saw they were in the pattern of the crosses on an altar stone. In a flash I saw Caspar, conviviality and sacrifice, Rip Van Winkle and our Saviour.

"You may not believe it, but I have come home to live," were Caspar's first words to our parents when, after being discharged from the Army, he got off the train at Cincinnati. That was good news, but difficult to believe. Every instinct impelled him to roam and every good business opening offered him involved being away from home. They frequently meant going to South America. That appealed to him, and I know he was acutely tempted to accept an offer that would have taken him to Brazil. The upper waters of the Amazon seemed within his reach. Fortunately for us that job involved working for a German-American, and he said he had seen enough of Germans.

When he was at home in the spring of 1919 he said he thought a holiday was due him and that he did not intend even to look for work until after his Decennial Class Reunion in Cambridge that June. So for three months at home he amused himself, his parents and every one he met.

The pro-Germanism and the anti-British feeling he found broadcast in Cincinnati disgusted him. He felt something must be done to make Americans understand the Allies and be willing to work with them for the peace of the world. He talked on that subject with every one he met. Also he made several public speeches. People who heard them say they were clear, intelligent and convincing. The first was at a meeting for our Allies in the garden at home. Caspar was one of several ex-soldiers to speak. Afterwards he was asked to speak to hundreds of boys and girls at Hughes High School and at the Wise Social Centre. These speeches were not overlooked by the British and the French offices of propaganda. From the British Great War Veterans of America we received this letter of sympathy and appreciation:

New York City,
March 30, 1920.

DEAR MRS. BURTON,

IT is with sincere regret that the New York Command of the above Association learned of your deep loss, and your son's name shall ever be held in reverence and esteem by this Command.

Though the good Lord has seen fit to call your son, I am sure that it will always be a grateful remembrance to you that he fought for liberty and freedom when the world cried aloud for assistance.

Believe us to be

Ever sincerely yours,

F. G. ARMSTRONG,           
British Great War Veterans of America, Inc.

Count de Wierzbicki, of the French High Commission, who, like Caspar, had spoken at Hughes High School, telegraphed on March 31: "Just heard the tragic news. Please accept my deepest heart sympathy for you and all the splendid young fighter's family and believe in my own most sincere grief and sense of personal loss."

In May Caspar went to the woods with Father for the trout fishing. It was the place he wanted to go most. Then in June he went to Cambridge for the Tenth Reunion of the Harvard Class of 1909. He had missed all his other class reunions and tried to make up for lost time. Certainly no one has ever packed into a few days more fun with old friends than he did. What really pleased him most about them was that they saw eye to eye with him on the War. Ranks and decorations did not impress him. What he wanted to know was when men had gotten into the War and how far they had gotten into it. The War records of Harvard men made him more completely devoted to Harvard than ever.

By the time he got back to Cincinnati and to hunting work it was July. Then most of the prominent businessmen were away. He got bored and discouraged by having long interviews with under-men in firms, for he knew they had not the authority to give him a good job. It seemed futile to try to find a business opening until autumn. So early in August he and Father went back to camp, where they stayed for over a month on their last and happiest visit there together. Father says Caspar never talked more interestingly than during that time in the woods about the War, international problems, and his own prospects in business. While there he wrote his last letter, in time to reach Mother on her birthday.

Pontiac Game Club,           
Doyle Post Office,           
Pro. Quebec, Canada,  
August, 1919.

DEAR MOTHER,

WE are having as usual a splendid time, but I am very glad you didn't come. If you had you would not have been left alone when we went out, but would have had -------to keep you company. He and William(1) are more than anybody should be asked to face alone. Surely of this Club was it written, "Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile." Oh, if I only had the authority to handle that German! They can't understand that you have either got to have a German under you or have him insolent.

This ought to get to you about September . Many happy returns. Give my best to Spence and everybody.

I think much about work. I feel confident of making good at a job, even if uninteresting, once I have got one, but I feel like a child when it comes to getting one. I don't seem to know where, when or how to begin. I feel like sailing a boat, tacking aimlessly about with no particular object, getting nowhere and not getting much fun out of it. If somebody would only come alongside and tell me where to sail I would trim sheets and hold her nose to it even if it was a rough voyage.

Love,                 
CAP.

No letter is more characteristic of him --- with plenty of courage for "a rough voyage," he felt himself "tacking aimlessly about with no particular object."

Father took the helm when they got back to Cincinnati. By October he had found an excellent business opening, and Cap jumped into it with all his enthusiasm. Although he was entirely without business training he seemed extraordinarily able in his new business, especially in managing men.

It did not last long, for on December 8 he became acutely ill. As soon as he got out of the Army we all noticed his quick, short breaths. Physicians told him he had a bounding pulse and that with all that junk in his lung and with such heart action he must never have pneumonia. Shortly after getting out of the Army he found blood on his pillow several mornings. He thought that the junk in his lung might have moved. In any case he was worried enough to consult a physician. After a brief examination Dr. Greenebaum told him he must attend to his heart at once. Instead of having a thorough heart examination Caspar left him, saying, "You let that old pump of mine alone. It has seen me through the War and I guess it is good for a long time yet."

Caspar knew his heart was in bad shape. He promised to see a physician in Boston about his heart when he went on for his Class Reunion. All summer we noticed that he rarely played golf or rode. He went habitually to the ball games. We thought that strange, for he had always preferred to play games than to watch others do so. During his illness he told us that he found he could not negotiate the hills on the golf course and that his heart was not up to any real exercise. All summer he lost weight. By autumn the civilian clothes he had bought in London when he was a soldier hung on him like sacks. We were all worried about his health, but he made light of it and insisted that he was all right. After the collapse came he admitted that he knew all along that his heart was in a serious condition. He saved it as much as he could without being an invalid. He said he thought that the end would come suddenly, and that in the meantime he did not want to worry us, or to have us worry him by urging him not to do this or that. He thought he would live as he pleased while he lived and that then he would die as he preferred, suddenly. He had to learn a different way. His error in judgment does not detract from his courage or from his generosity to us by going on with his life cheerfully while knowing all the time that death was much more than a possibility.

When he became acutely ill early in December we all thought that he was in for a long siege in bed to rest up his heart, as he had had to do in 1912. Distressing as that was, none of us thought he had gone to his deathbed. I did not go home to see him until the middle of January. He looked badly, but it did not seem possible for any one gravely ill to be as gay as he was. His bed was the centre of the house. All interest gravitated to it and all fun radiated from it. Mick spent the whole winter on it. He alone had "the time of his life." He knew just where to find Caspar, and Caspar could not get away from him. His devotion was touching and his fun helped Caspar and all of us through many dark hours.

Caspar not only wanted Mick beside him on the bed, but he wanted all of us in the room. Mother rarely left. If Father were out of the room for any length of time Caspar would ask, almost complainingly, "Why does Dad go over to Bob's or down to the stable? What does he do with himself?" When I was even across the hall writing or dictating he would ask Mother, "Does Spence have to write so many letters?"

This was a new attitude towards people for him to take in sickness. In 1912, when he was in bed so long, he wanted and almost demanded that he be left alone. In 1920 he wanted his family and his friends with him constantly. They certainly wanted to be with him. His cheerfulness and fun were contagious. We all caught it, Father, Mother and I rarely left him. The servants came into his room on the slightest excuse. The Burtons from next door came to the house several times a day, and Emily, Murdock and Clarence Burton usually went straight to his room. Murdock and Clarence played bridge with him most afternoons after work. Emily played too, and declared she didn't mind losing money to Caspar. Bridge went on constantly. Mr. Hofer was always ready to play and never failed to be a joy to Caspar. Tempy and Ruth Briggs often played. In fact there was never any difficulty in finding two good players to make up a game with Caspar and Father. Mrs. Hofer, Mrs. "Charley" and Mrs. "Vach" Anderson played with him and loved to do so, but his stand-by was Mrs. George Hoadley. She was always ready to come. Towards the end of his illness Caspar said, "Mrs. Hoadley doesn't fool me by always being free to come. Of course she breaks engagements to do it." After that he used to speak of her as "the friend who never has an engagement."

Other friends came in shoals. Bruce and Tempy were with him every day. Mark and Sally Mitchell, Ruth Briggs, Marie Graydon, Katherine Anderson, Judith Colstan, Marian Field, Hilda Ault, Lincoln Mitchell, Cleves Short, Hugh Whittaker, Russell Wilson, the de Gisberts and dozens of friends were often at the house and with him whenever they were allowed to be. Both doctors and nurses were agreed that people helped rather than hurt him.

Suddenly, on January 23, he took a grave turn for the worse. An embolus went from his heart to his lungs. Fortunately he coughed it out, but he was acutely ill. We were alarmed. Every one except Caspar wanted additional medical advice. He withstood us for a few days, but finally consented. After much telegraphing for advice we got a great heart specialist from Chicago, Dr. Williamson, to come in consultation with Dr. Greenebaum and Dr. Frielander. After examining Caspar Dr. Williamson said to us, "He makes the War more real to me than any man I have seen. Given his physical limitations I think he did more than any man I know for the cause of the Allies."

Such praise was good to hear, but he had a hard message for Caspar. He and the Cincinnati doctors recognized that Caspar knew too much about hearts and medicines for them to be able to hide anything from him. Also they knew that his chance for life lay in his complete coöperation. To win that they told him all they knew about him and could hope for him. They told him that everything in the way of absolute quiet must be done to prevent other embolic attacks. Another might be fatal. They considered that, if such an attack could be avoided for another six weeks, he would live. They could not give him hope of complete recovery. That was a cruel blow to Cap. What they called "a very restricted life" meant to him not really living. He asked them if he would ever be able to ride again. When they saw his disappointment to their negative answer, one of them ventured, "Possibly, if it were a very gentle horse." Cap turned to me in disgust with, "Can you see me mounting a very gentle horse?"

Shortly after getting the news that if he were to live it would be as an invalid Caspar said to Bruce: "The doctors told me I couldn't ever play golf again. Golf? As if I care! All through the War, whenever I thought I would come out of it, there were two things I wanted to do, go back to The Labrador and hunt in Ireland. Of course there is no chance of my ever doing either of those things again."

Then he stopped talking about himself and was perfectly cheerful. His spirit never broke, even if the life he liked to live were ended. Sport, travel, adventure were what he had planned for himself. At once he resigned from the Golf Club and countermanded an order for a motor. We tried to persuade him not to do that. We told him he would need it in the spring, especially if he couldn't walk much. His reply was, "I'm not going to have Dad saddled with a car he doesn't want."

Caspar's only interest in business was to make enough money to be free for sport and exploration. As he could not look forward to such a life he lost all interest in business success. It had no purpose now.

Fortunately just at this time Mrs. Campbell Fraser had come to our house for a visit. She and Caspar were great friends, from the war days together in Oxford, Sonning and London. She and all of us rallied to Caspar to cheer him up that day the blow fell. We were superfluous. Instead he kept us laughing all day, when we were in his room, even if we had to go out from time to time to gain control of ourselves.

That night, after all the house was quiet, I slipped across the hail into Cap's room. The nurse had stepped into the bathroom. One reading light on his table focussed on the Crucifix beside his bed. He lay in the dim light, face downward, with arms outstretched, a shadow Crucifix. Without saying a word I put my hand on his shoulder. After an intense silence his voice came from the pillows, broken but strong, "I'm not going to quit, but I never wanted to so much in my life."

After that night he and I were often alone together, friend and friend, brother and brother, Father and spiritual son. Three times that week he asked me to bring him the Blessed Sacrament from my daily Mass in the oratory across the hall. As Father, Mother and all the servants knelt there praying for him I carried to him the Precious Body and Blood of our Saviour.

Those were days when I knew why God had made me a priest. Those were days when Caspar showed me the reality of his religion. He always found it hard, almost impossible to talk to any one about his own personal religion. In fact he habitually talked on all subjects to reveal his mind rather than his heart. Sometimes it seemed that he talked not to reveal anything, but actually to conceal his feelings. Being so constituted it is not strange that he didn't often speak of his religion. Also he was shy about talking about it, for he felt he had so completely failed to live it. During those times alone with him I often thought of the Pharisee and the Publican.

From this time on not many people were allowed in his room. Crowds of friends continued to come to the house, especially at tea-time. Caspar resented having Mother leave him to go to the drawing-room. One day he said, "Can't you give those people meal tickets and let them go away?"

Every one seemed determined to get as near him as they were allowed. He was not permitted to talk much for fear of bringing on a cough that would loosen another embolus from his heart. It was impossible to be with him and not let him talk, for he was so interesting. He was a big talker, yet he rarely gossiped and never criticised. Moreover, he would not be criticised. To avoid it he would go away to another room, another city, another country, or if necessary another continent.

He did not read much during his last illness, as he had always done before, and he would not let any one read aloud to him. He did not finish many of the books that were sent him. "Reynard the Fox," by Masefield, which Mrs. Barrett Wendell sent him, he read aloud to Mother with enthusiasm. Stopping in the middle of it he laid it aside, saying, "I can't read much at a time. This is what the world was like before Prussianism and reformers spoiled it."

One could not be a monologue artist, And he would take his part in general conversation. Cards worked best. Bridge and countless games of Canfield were played on the table beside his pillow.

His physicians said there was no chance of his suddenly taking a change for the better. He knew I had work to do and engagements to keep and urged me to go. It seemed best to do so, as staying on would suggest to him that I was waiting there for him to die. In fact he said to me: "There's no use your waiting here. There isn't going to be any crisis. If I get well at all it will be slow work. If I cough off another embolus there is no telling where it may hit. If it goes to my brain it will be all over in a moment, and there's no use your being here for that."

So I planned to go away to keep my engagements. The day before I was to leave I obviously did not want to go. He had been acutely ill again. I thought of telegraphing my Father Superior for further directions. Caspar jumped at that possibility and asked me to telegraph, "Caspar asks if I may stay a few days longer."

I returned to him March 1. He had had grave times and astonishing recoveries. In spite of his spirit and of his power to pick up, he looked much worse, even if he were allowed to sit up in a chair each day. I was not the only one who had gone a long way to see him. Helen Fraser had come from Texas, Schofield Andrews from Philadelphia, Henry Wilder from Boston, Charley and Camilla Short from New York, and Dr. and Mrs. Grenfell had altered their schedule of lectures so as to go to him when they did.

When Caspar received this letter from Dr. Grenfell his eyes filled with tears and his lip quivered as he said, "Please put that away. I want to keep it."

Boston, Mar. 4, '20.

DEAR CASPAR,

I HAVE only today heard of your sickness, and I at once want you to know how deeply sorry I am. You aren't the kind that lets people know you care about emotional things, and yet you can't get away always. We all developed a very real affection for you in the North. Perhaps we did not say much about it at the time --- but you came like a bolt from the blue and helped us, and myself especially, when I was in a good stiff fight, and needed all the encouragement I could get. We have been getting on the top of late, and soon shall have "Bay Hospitals" all round Newf'l'd. We were all prinking our feathers, when we heard of your work "over the top" in France. Your name went ringing all along the old Coast. Every one heard of your work in the trench and your wounds.

Now every one will be awful sorry that it is you again "who need the physicians," and we all want you to feel we think of you in your trouble --- and whether you value it or not, we pray you may be given that comfort and peace which comes from faith in the dignity and value of life --as the forerunner of continuous life --- and sons of the everlasting God. You can't get away from these things, so take it with good grace, that we are serious both in our affection and our prayers.

We are to be in Cincinnati soon --- i.e., I am --- and we shall hope to shake the flipper yet of a convalescent former comrade --- fitted to "carry on" here on earth for a long while yet.

Ever affectionately yours,

WILFRED GRENFELL.

Camilla Short wrote, before she arrived, these words of praise that were also a help to Caspar:

Mount Kisco, New York.

MY DEAREST BYRD,

WHAT can I say --- if I possibly could I would take the next train and ask Caspar to put heart into me --- he would do that I know however ill he was. I can't help thinking that "The Great Adventure" is still far off from him --he is such a plucky spirit that he is bound to face it as such when it does come, but at the same time to make a big stand for the rest of life here. You know that we love him --- what more can I say.

Tenderly,               
CAMILLA.

Another letter that he especially appreciated came from Mrs. Bowlker, of Boston:

282 Beacon Street.

DEAR CASPAR,

SPENCE has just told me of your long illness, of your tremendous courage, and of your cheerful patient endurance. These are the qualities that I have seen again and again in wounded soldiers, they are the magnificent, heroic qualities of true men. I always recognized them in you, and loved you for them, but I cannot bear that you should be put to so terrible a test. It is far harder for you than death on the battle-field or the quick death as the result of fighting that came to James.

I wish so deeply that I were near, just to drop in and say, "Well done, and good luck to you in the future."

Don't be downcast; I know so many cases that the doctors have pronounced incurable, yet the patient has not only lived, but grown almost as strong as well people. I shall look forward to this result for you. It is small comfort to be a hero, but remember we all know you as one.

Affectionately,                           
K. BOWLKER.

The devotion of his friends meant a lot to Cap, and he was touched by their having travelled far to see him. Henry Wilder, in a letter written after Caspar's death, sums up what I think all of us who went to see him felt; "I doubt if any one was fonder of the old fellow and more proud of him than I, and he was game until the end. I went to Cincinnati to try to cheer him up, but one would have thought that I was the one to be amused."

As I stayed on day after day in Lent Caspar said to Mother; "Scho and Henry were only able to stay a day or two. I know Spence is as busy as they are. How can he stay? I suppose he is just letting all his Lenten work slide. And I notice he doesn't write letters this time."

Indeed I didn't write letters during that visit. I wanted to be with him every minute. I often held him in my arms as he gasped for breath. He spoke to me of religion more easily this time. It would not be fair to him to write of much he said, but I must share one remark.

"I met men in the trenches," he said, "who declared they didn't believe in life after death. They lie. They do believe in it. That's all bluff. They know that, when they are alive one minute, a shell hitting them doesn't annihilate them. God knows I've done enough to wreck my faith, but somehow I haven't succeeded."

Caspar expressed his religion in kindness, prayer and sacrifice. He never appreciated the value of sermons, psalms, hymns, litanies and all the devotions he found in what he called "darling little pious books." I know he prayed when he was alone, especially in the wilderness. When he went to church it was for Holy Communion. In the great moments of his life he wanted our Lord and he knew he received Him in the Blessed Sacrament. Those were blessed Communions he made in March at my hands. There was no divorce between sacred and secular in Caspar's sick-room or in his mind. Life was a unity and characteristic of Caspar through and through. On one side of his bed was the crucifix, on the other a card table. Mick was usually in the room, intensely interested. At the foot of his bed was an improvised altar with two candles burning. Beside him knelt his nurse to make her Communion with him, and propped up on the pillows lay Caspar pale and reverent.

During that last visit together he and I talked without constraint. He could not see that he was of any use in the world. It hurt us to hear him speak of what a source of anxiety and trouble he had been to his family. We tried hard to show him how essential he was to us, to our happiness, and how we loved him. He thought Father and Mother had each other and that my life was full, that none of us really needed him. He dreaded the life of an invalid. Mother, Scho and I tried to tell him that he had always been so busy using his body that he had never half used his mind, and now that he would get his happiness by using it. He did not contradict us, but he was not convinced. I begged him to try to live for our sakes, even if he did not care to for his own. Nothing we could say could make him believe he was not a failure. He knew his family and his friends loved him. That was a real happiness to him, but he could not say so. He knew how to love, but he did not know how to make love. He felt that in that too he was a failure.

At this time he lost the money he had invested in his new business, solely because he had not been able to take care of it. That was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He thought he had failed again. "I should like just once to be connected with success," he said.

"How about the Allies' Victory?" Mother asked. "You were in the war four years."

"Yes," he said, "and the damned politicians are spoiling that."

Making friends, and dying for them, was the work of his life. Never was a life-work more completely a success.

One of the last friends he made, and one of the most devoted, was his nurse, Mrs. MacAdam. She was a gift from God. She had just the characteristics of skill, fun and complete lack of fussiness that Caspar liked. She had been a nurse in the A.E.F., and so they had war experience in common. I do not think they ever got on each other's nerves in all those sixteen weeks of suffering and gaiety, cheerfulness and dying. One morning she came down to breakfast laughing over a remark of his to her during the night. He had had a night of gasping for breath. To relieve him she held him up in her arms. While in that position he said to her, "My, Mrs. Mac, I'm glad you are middle-aged and plain."

She answered, "Why, I am not middle-aged, and I never thought of myself as plain."

To that he answered, "Well, you are both."

It is easy to see why he died unmarried.

One day Mother came home from a funeral conducted by a Unitarian minister and complained of its coldness. Caspar said to her: "You have lots of troubles, but worrying how you will be buried is not one of them. Spence will bury us up to the hilt and his way will be right. I should as soon tell a great artist how to paint a picture as to tell Spence what to do."

We all recognized that he was thinking about his own burial and giving me a vote of confidence. In this same connection he spoke of how he loathed "sloppy ceremonial" in the Army or in the Church. "Ceremonial ought to be ceremonious," he said. "Deliver me from cozy, homey funerals in the parlor." He disliked equally what he called "exercises over the dear departed." I remember him coming home one day in Boston from the funeral of an intimate friend, and saying, "For Heaven's sake, don't have a programme over my body, but say a prayer for my poor soul."

One morning, shortly before his death, he said to Mother: "I had such a curious dream last night. I dreamed I was dead, and of course I wanted 'C. Hof' for one of my pallbearers. He said he wanted to wear his old brown hat, but Mrs. Hofer was insisting that he wear his silk hat. I was trying to say to her, 'Woman, I don't want the man's hat. I want the man."

Although he spoke indirectly of his death during those last weeks, he and all of us talked of what his life would be. When he got up he planned to go to Boston to consult certain physicians there who had had experience in France with chest wounds. He said to Henry Wilder, "I may be on to visit you in the spring, and I'll stay a month --- if I come at all."

Mother planned to get Astin to come from England to be his valet. Cap thought that a great extravagance, but he said he could think of no one he would be so glad to have take care of him as Astin.

We all took care of him at this time, in the way of holding him up to enable him to get his breath and also by holding his head while he vomited. Almost everything he ate came up. The nearest he came to complaining was, "I wish some of this damn stuff would take the subway instead of the elevated."

On March 12 Dr. Grenfell came. He was a great joy to Caspar. I left that same day to return to my routine work. Caspar looked very badly then, but he was sitting up each day and the doctors assured me that he was in no immediate danger of death. I planned to leave at noon, on the only through train to Boston. Caspar was having a bad morning. It was hard to leave. As the time for me to go drew near, Cap said: "You know there is an evening train, don't you, Spencey? It doesn't connect anywhere and you'll probably be hours late, but it will get you back in time for your services Sunday."

Of course I waited for it. All afternoon there seemed nothing to say, as if we were waiting in a railway station. At last the evening came. He and I had a prayer together. I gave him a blessing and there was a last embrace. Both of us felt, I know, that it might be the last, but one could not have a scene with Cap. I was off into the night, leaving him with Father, Mother, Dr. Grenfell, Mrs. MacAdam and Mick --- at home. After I had gone he said to Mother: "I tried to send Spencey off feeling good, but it was too much for me. I couldn't quite do it."

That evening Dr. Grenfell began to lecture in Cincinnati. Everywhere he praised Caspar, his work in the North, his service in the war, his gay heroism in suffering. Cincinnati people could never again think of Caspar as only a genial and witty loafer. Dr. Grenfell's words carried weight. He had facts to tell and a great Christian love and admiration for Caspar.

After a few days he went, and Caspar was alone in the house with Father and Mother. It was good that they should have had him to themselves that last week. Fortunately he seemed better than he had for months. Their letters were full of hope, yet Mother's conviction that he was dying grew stronger. Against all the doctors said, her maternal instinct was true. It seemed supernatural.

On Sunday Caspar asked if Father Boggess would bring him the Blessed Sacrament next morning. Early Monday morning he asked Mother to telephone Father Boggess not to come. He had had to have morphine in the night and said, "I won't make my Communion when I'm dopey."

Wednesday noon he got much worse. It was obvious that he was dying. Father and Mother never left him. Twice in his agony he said, "Why couldn't I have gone out over there like Dill and the rest?" At three Mother said to him, "Father Boggess is here with the Blessed Sacrament now, instead of on Monday when you asked him to come. Don't you want to make your Communion?"

"Why, may I receive in the afternoon?" he asked.

"Yes, when you are very ill," Mother replied. Caspar understood, for he said, "I must be very bad then. Yes, I do want to make my Communion."

By that time he was so weak from hemorrhages that he could hardly speak. As he lay silent in Father's arms with his eyes closed, Father and Mother made the general confession for him, and Caspar said "Amen." Father Boggess pronounced the absolution and communicated him. Then Caspar raised his voice and recited the Lord's Prayer so that he was distinctly heard by friends praying in the oratory and by other friends downstairs. From his cross he cried out "with a loud voice." His sacrifice was almost finished. "Father, into Thy hands."

In his father's arms he lay for three hours more as his heart pounded itself to pieces.

"Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother." The holy mother is ever there, praying.

There were not many words said, no messages of goodbye. Caspar was Caspar to the end, loving, unable to express his love, courageous, generous, true. Twice he looked off with a steady gaze, as if to Someone coming from far away. He said nothing, but love cried out through the hand that patted Mother's and through the other hand that held fast to Father.

At six o'clock the fight was over, the victory won.

"Thirty years among us dwelling, His appointed time fulfilled, Born for this he meets his Passion, For that this he freely willed: On the Cross the Lamb is lifted, Where his life-blood shall be spilled."

AT last the dawn. The news of Caspar's death had reached me at Albany towards midnight. By the first light that came through the car window I read from my breviary those lines of the hymn for Passiontide. Surely we may reverently apply to Christ's members words written of Him.

At last evening came. As I continued to gaze out of the window,

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest;
Sweet is the calm of Paradise the blest.
              Alleluia, Alleluia."

That glorious sunset seemed God's welcome to his son. It was as if the angels were clapping and shouting, "Encore, Encore." The thought came from Chesterton's "Orthodoxy," to Caspar's mind the great modern apology for Christianity. Close by this passage I find these sentences: "Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde."

So Caspar paid for the sunset of his life, "by not being Oscar Wilde." He chose, instead of softness, sacrifice. The inevitable end of that is glory.

In the darkness Father and I motored from the station to the house, but there we found light. I hurried to the room where thirteen days before I had left Caspar trying to smile out of an exhausted, broken body. He had won his fight. "The last enemy to be overcome is death."

Caspar's body lay silent and majestic. The flags, under which he had fought for truth and righteousness, the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack, covered him. A single palm lay on them. Mother knelt beside him. Nobility dries up tears. From a broken heart I could say, Amen and Alleluia.

His friends came in a steady stream. Each and all felt the awe of his presence and the impulse to pray. His room seemed to have become a place of pilgrimage, a shrine to which we all came. Helen Fraser was the first from a distance to get there. She arrived an hour after he died. Three months later she wrote from the Battlefields: "When we were motoring between Amiens and Péronne the look of the country reminded me suddenly of how Caspar looked when I first saw him that Wednesday night, a look of great peace and calm and aloofness, great rest after a terrific battle. All that countryside looked so still. We saw no one for miles and miles, and yet there was no devastation visible out of sight of the towns. All the tornup country was covered with a vivid green growth and with masses of poppies and mustard. And yet the poppies and mustard didn't give it a banal, merely pretty, look. One knew and felt what was under the gentle covering, and if one hadn't the imagination to be conscious of it the piles of pine coffins stacked up by the roadside wherever any attempt was being made to cultivate the land would have reminded one of what had raged over this now peaceful country for four years."

M. de Gisbert came bringing with him the perfect tribute. He had two palms of victory, tipped with gold as in the fresco in the Panthéon, "Vers la gloire." They were tied with the Tricolor. On a card he had inscribed:

Standing at the foot of Caspar's body he said to Mother: "Madame, I do not presume to thank mon boy in my own name, but in the name of France. Had there not been brave men like Cap there would no longer be a France."

So he placed the palms of victory on his dear boy's body. In Caspar's completed sacrifice the Tricolor of France was with the flags of Great Britain and his own America.

We all gravitated to his room and were about his bed as we had been when he was alive. Only Mick was uninterested in his body. Mick had lived on his bed all winter. Suddenly he took no interest in it. The person he loved was not there. He had instinct unclouded by reason. He was in the room with us most of the time and subdued, but he never tried to jump onto the bed beside Caspar's body. For him Caspar was gone.

On Friday afternoon we moved Caspar's body from his bed onto a low bier before the altar in the oratory. The flags and the palms still covered him. Around him burned six tall wax candles. All night long we watched and prayed.

Caspar was at last enthroned. All his life he had shunned recognition of good deeds done. In his death he was triumphant. His body looked so little lying there, and yet majestic. One can use no smaller word. There was in his face and in his form the dignity of accomplishment, the nobility of sacrifice. All through the silent night the flickering candles lighted up the face that was turned to the altar Crucifix.

As I knelt there that night our lives unrolled before me. I had wanted for him success, even if I had chosen for myself sacrifice. What I had professed he had accomplished. The Crucifix around my neck truly belonged to him. In its place I took the little Cross he had worn throughout the War. I remembered my daily prayer for him, "God, give him a great and noble purpose in life, and grace to fulfil it." We pray more generously than we know. It hurts to have our prayers answered.

In the early morning there were the Requiem and the Absolutions in the presence of his body. Only his family, the servants and a few intimate friends were with us there, solely because there was so little room in our family oratory. Father and Mother knelt at his head and together made their Communions for him.

"Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life: and I will raise him up at the last day."

The funeral was from Grace Church, Avondale, where he had been baptized and confirmed and where he had made his First Communion. His body lay, still under the flags and palms, before the altar Crucifix which is a memorial to our Grandfather Spence. The church was crowded with his friends. They loved him and they venerated his sacrifice. Yet he died convinced that he was a failure. God has a different judgment, "Greater love bath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Those words are carved on his Cross. We buried him beside our other soldier, his Grandfather Burton, who had fought almost a century before in the Mexican War. They were alike in many ways, in their weakness and in their strength. Both of them were adventurous, generous and lovable.

"God hath a will to be done, not in earth only, but also in heaven; they are not dismissed from the King's business who are called from the camp to the court."

From the hour of his death, and during the six months since, scores of telegrams, cablegrams and letters of sympathy, admiration and love have come to us. It would be impossible to print them all. Already we have included in notes to his letters many sentences from these letters which seem to add to the picture of Caspar. Many more letters remain. From among them we have chosen parts of these few, not because they are dearer to us than the others, but because they show the wide circle of friends who love and admire him.

Letters from soldiers must come first.

From his Commanding Officer:

Junior United Service Club,      
London, S.W. 1,   
13 June, 1920.

DEAR MRS. BURTON,

I HEARD through Col. Allen of the sad news that your son Caspar had died of his wounds and I am writing to assure you of my heartiest sympathy. I well remember his gallantry in May, 1917, during an attack on the Hindenburg Line and for which I recommended him for the Military Cross.

I met him again for a short time when he was with the American Army and hoped he had recovered from his wounds. It is more than ever hard to think that after returning home he should have had a relapse.

It all seems a long time ago now and much has happened since, but I shall always remember Caspar and feel proud that so brave a young cousin came and joined the Battalion.

With kindest regards,

Yours sincerely,

E. M. BEALL, Lt. Col.,     
4 Bn., The King's Regt.

From his military servant.

Astin always referred to him as "Mr. Burton" before his death; but after that he was "Caspar," "more of a chum to me than my Officer":

77 Athal St., Burnley, Lancs., Eng.
20-5-20.

DEAR MR. BURTON,

I RECEIVED your letter of the 4th inst. last night the 19th. It is with very great regret that I write these few lines. I cannot pretend to tell you here how surprised I was when I opened your letter to see that Caspar, your dear son, and my Officer and friend, was dead. It seems such hard luck after nearly two years of peace to die from wounds received so long since. I have not been able to get it out of my mind at work today. I have had so many little incidents coming before my mind's eye. How plainly I can remember the trench where your son received the wounds that have proved mortal. I can remember the whole" stunt" from beginning to end. It was Caspar who told me to get away from the trench when I was wounded, and then when I was at the Clearing Station afterwards he was carried in himself and of course I could see then that he was seriously wounded and even then he asked me if I was feeling alright. He had a very rough time coming down from the line with the shaking of the ambulance. That was the last time I saw him. I have often wished I could see him again. I got to understand him very well indeed and he has often told me that I knew what he wanted better than he did himself. He got to be more of a Chum to me than my Officer and I could not help but do my best for him. All the boys in the Company liked him and also the lads on the Transport. I have often thought of him and have spoken of that so much at home that my Father and Mother both feel as if they knew him well. I can remember quite well most of the things in general while we were together in France. I cannot express in words what I feel by the loss of Caspar as he was a good friend to me and what I liked best he was very straight and did not mix things that he wanted to say. I now offer my deepest sympathy to you and Mrs. Burton and truly hope and trust that time will heal the wound caused by your great loss. My Father and my Mother and my young lady wish to offer their heartfelt sympathy in this your time of grief. I shall be very pleased to hear from you again and to see you when you come to England again. I am so glad I have a Photo of him in Uniform.

I remain,

Yours sincerely,                           
HORACE ASTIN.

From the Commanding Officer of his company of cadets in Oxford:

Keble College, Oxford,    
April 25, 1920.

MY DEAR FATHER BURTON,

I HAVE to thank you very much for your letter of April 4th, but also to say how very sorry I am to hear of Caspar's death. He was a great fellow --- a remarkable fellow and quite a notable man in that company. I am so sorry that his sterling sense of duty and his patriotism and enthusiasm for the right has resulted in his death. His old comrades in my old company will be very sorry to hear it too. I think one of his old instructors is an undergraduate here now.

Please accept my very sincere sympathy with you and yours in the loss of a fine fellow of most unusual character.

I am

Yours sincerely,

F. W. MATHESON.

From Col. Colston, of Cincinnati, a veteran of the Civil War, and Caspar's friend all his life, came roses with this card:

For my                                  

"Little Hero"

EDWARD COLSTON,
March 26, '20.

The following letters are placed roughly in the order in which the writers were connected with Caspar:

From Miss Furness, his teacher, when he was eight years old, in the Avondale Public School. She first saw Caspar when she was my teacher and he was only two years old. Her letter shows more insight into his nature than almost any we have received.

Avondale, July, 1920.

MY DEAR SPENCE:

HARD as it has been to set down in cold words my feeling for him, I am most glad to pay some small tribute to the boy I loved and the young man I honored.

One of the most vivid memories of the year I began to teach is my first sight of Caspar. He came trotting through your mother's room where we sat just before luncheon, a sturdy little figure in a stiff white dress, head held characteristically high, intent upon some business of his own, which nothing could be permitted to interfere with. His supreme indifference to their blandishments amused your mother and your aunt. "You see, Miss Furness," said your mother, "what you will have to face in a few years."

Half a dozen years later, Caspar came to me in the old Avondale School. The Third Grade --- known as the "Second Reader" in those days ---was quartered away from the main building in half of what had been the Council Chamber of the Old Town Hall. We were an isolated community over there, unusually self-dependent for those years of conformity to a prescribed educational pattern, and we were a bit freer than most, to go our own way in the paths of learning. Even so, I looked with some trepidation, I confess, upon Caspar's advent, for he had the reputation of not fitting into the educational scheme. In my own mind I was not willing to trim him down for the sake of the pattern, though the exigencies of the system always had to be reckoned with. He never did fit in orthodox manner. The routine work he accepted with more or less grace, but not much enthusiasm. He did it because it was part of the game, but he was no born student .... The Second Reader he endured because it must be learned, but stories of adventure or heroism and bits of romantic geography surreptitiously inserted into that and "Course of Study" always brought the lift to his head, and the sparkle to his eyes.

In a class of unusually individual boys and girls he stands out in my mind as one of the most potent personalities. He attracted the other pupils, he liked them, and they liked him in a thoroughly affectionate, democratic fashion. He always played a game, fair and square to the end, without undue exultation at success, or whining at defeat. Once --- and this is the only instance of discipline I remember ---he had been bothering every one about him with some bit of impish mischief, and I had spoken to him several times with no effect. Finally I said, "Caspar, since you will act like a baby, I must treat you like one." With that I took him on my lap and held him for five or ten minutes till we finished the lesson, and then sent him back to his seat. He said nothing, it was sufficient punishment and one which fitted the offence, but I have always had an uneasy feeling about it in my own mind. There was the faintest shadow of reproach in his eyes, as if a friend had unexpectedly failed to understand, and I sometimes doubt whether I touched too roughly that deep and sacred pride of his. For, little fellow though he was, he had it --- a pride of training, a pride of inheritance, a personal pride and dignity of spirit beneath his apparent carelessness of manner. He might be indifferent, but in his code, no gentleman could be discourteous. He might offend, but no son of his family could stoop to meanness. He might do wrong, but Caspar Burton could not condescend to a lie. Whatever the consequences, he faced the truth, and spoke and acted it, with utter fearlessness. He hated anything cruel or unjust. His occasional fierce little gusts of temper, which doubled up his fists or made him defy all authority, were always called out by some act which did not look fair to him, quite as often in behalf of others as of himself.

In spite of his frank and friendly attitude toward us all, I was always aware of a delicate veil of reserve, of a kind of shyness, an aloofness, entirely unconscious on his part, as much an element in his spiritual make-up as was his fine responsiveness to certain ideas and ideals the others did not always show. What others might think of him apparently entered not at al into his scheme of personal conduct. Yet under his seeming thoughtlessness and stoicism lay a passionate desire for understanding and affection from those whom he cared for, which he hid as effectively as though he had been years older. His indifference, instinctively assumed to defend a deeply sensitive heart, he wore as proudly as ever knight of old his armor. A gallant little figure, with his dark bright eyes, and head proudly erect, he marched through that year, wistful, happy, careless, courageous, destined, I clearly saw, for all the depths and heights of sorrow and joy that await a human soul.

When, a year ago, I saw him again, when he spoke at Hughes High School, he was the same gallant figure of my memories. In spite of pain he held his head as though it wore a knightly crest, his eyes looked into mine with the same light-hearted smile, his voice had the never forgotten intonation, half wistful, half daring, wholly winning. No hero could have been more simple and modest in his estimation of his own deeds. Moreover, through the heroism of the man breathed the charm of the boy. It was as the born leader of men that he had answered the summons to his chivalrous soul. The service with Dr. Grenfell, the noble spirit that sent him into the War, the consecration to the mission of brotherhood after the fighting, they were all his inevitable destiny. All that he promised to be, in the Council Chamber of the Old Town Hall, I saw fulfilled in its finest form.

That last day of all, I sat in the back of the Church, alone. Spring was in the air, with all its sweetness and promise. Throughout the service a cardinal, high up on a tree just beyond the window at my side, sang glad and triumphant, rejoicing in the light and life that had conquered darkness and death. And in all my grief and heaviness of heart I could not but feel that all is well with Caspar's gallant soul.

MARY BAKER FURNESS.

From Dr. Grenfell:

Chicago, March 25, '20.

DEAR MRS. BURTON,

THE scenes in his bedroom these last days will never be effaced from my memory till we meet again --- and I can thank him who so bravely showed just what the Master would do in pain, in what I am certain he knew was his "via dolorosa." How he succeeded in making you, who loved him dearer than life, able to bear happily those terrible days and even prepared joyfully to face with him, that which you know he feared more than death, a long-drawn-out period of inefficiency and dependency.

God has willed it otherwise.

Dr. Grenfell writes in the July, 1920, number of "Among the Deep-Sea Fishers":

War is hell and no war is ever over. Its baneful ripples forever leave their imprint on mankind.

Some eight years ago a young Harvard graduate came North to help us in our work in Labrador. By day or night, in summer or winter, over the land by dog-sledge or over the sea in boats, he was always ready to go at a moment's notice to carry help to the man in need. His training in the rudiments of medicine, for he had spent a year and a half at the Harvard Medical School, made him doubly helpful to us and to the Coast. His irrepressible good nature made him see humor in positions that to others would have been discouraging and repellent. His invariably smiling face made him welcome in every cottage along our long shores. On many an errand of mercy he was the real effective, for he learned to know the long trails, and how to pilot tenderfoot workers to their destination as unerringly as he directed the motor yawls he loved so well, through the tortuous channels of our uncharted coastline. If there was a job to be done that needed tough work, long hours, and that seemed more monotonous than usual, too readily it was assumed "Oh. Caspar will go," and he always did. On one long trip we made together in the sailing yawl Floradel, from Indian Harbor to St. Anthony, we pressed on day and night, as we were short to time and eager to make the hospital. It was in the late fall and there was much ice about the thin wooden sides of the little vessel. It was an exciting trip, for in the long darkness storms unforeseen arrived and no friendly lighthouse was there to give us a chance to make harbor till daylight broke. It was my luck to be captain and doctor. A famous Princeton football captain was able seaman, mate and larboard watch. Caspar, as usual, assumed the hard jobs; was cook, steward, and general factotum, below decks --- an exacting task enough for any man under the conditions. Still he would join me on the watch. It was on such occasions I learned to love the real Caspar, camouflaged so cleverly behind an attitude so light-hearted to the world that at times it seemed almost cynical. I was content to be sleeping below if Caspar was at the helm.

After three years, war broke out, and with his experience of surgical work he felt the British Red Cross might accept his services. Freely, without one cent of remuneration, he had ever served our people in times of peace. It was so characteristic of him that he, an American, should at once respond to this new call to serve for the world --- and just as gladly he has now laid down his life for his ideals. His hospital of white canvas plastered with red crosses was bombed in broad daylight three miles behind the Belgian lines by a German aviator.

Caspar at once volunteered for fighting service and enlisted as a British "Tommy." He was recommended for the Military Cross for heroic work near Bullecourt. Badly wounded in his successful enterprise of turning the enemy from half a mile of trench, while lying in England in hospital his case was somehow overlooked --- a fact his mind only laughed at. Though really unfit to rejoin the army, when America entered the war nothing could restrain him and though twice rejected he was at last appointed first lieutenant and again saw front line service.

But he had been more severely hurt than his best friends knew, and when we met again, he was on his last sickbed at his home in Cincinnati. Worn and ill as he was not one iota of his optimism and courage had left him. He had suffered---God only knows how keenly---but he had won out, and was prepared to face even the life of a crippled man. We learned many lessons in the sick-room of this brave young hero to whom God has now spared the trial that he feared above all else.

The Kingdom of God cannot be built on earth by words --- vital as propaganda is recognized to be --- it is what we do that speaks loudly and is heard. The only force that can ever build the universal kingdom that shall be eternal is the force of love and that spreads only by contagion from one life to another. To some is given the gift of tongues.

Be grateful those who have it. To Caspar Burton it was given to see the vision and to follow it. He leaves behind, in the hearts of those who knew him, an echo of that same love that counted itself as naught that eternal force making for righteousness and peace which is man's highest dignity and glory however feebly here on earth he reflects it.

With the many who have given their lives for ours, we shall meet him in the ranks of those who were faithful unto death, and to whom a righteous judge can say, "Well done."

W.T.G.

From Arthur Gleason, of the Hector Munro Ambulance Corps:

IT was a forlorn section of the world to which Caspar Burton came in July of 1915. He came to Coxyde to help in the work of the Hector Munro Ambulance Corps. Coxyde was one of the dreary villages in the tiny strip of Belgium held by the Allies. It lay just south of Nieuport --- the northern end of the battle-line. The one street was churned into dust by the motor lorries that went by in an unending stream, carrying food and ammunition to the soldiers just beyond. Troops were trudging along every moment of the day and night --- going to the attack and returning en repos. The wounded came back along that road in ambulances as swiftly-moving as the pain of the occupants permitted. Funerals marched quietly on the village street to the church at the bend of the road. And over the quick and the dead and the wounded, over food and lodging, hovered thick attacking swarms of flies.

It was a strange mixed group to which Burton came. Those were the early unorganized days when volunteer help was needed and valued. The Hector Munro Corps had a dashing West End society woman, the daughter of an earl, a distinguished woman novelist, a London banker, professional chauffeurs. It had distributed itself over several sections. The Coxyde group, which Caspar Burton joined, had Gilling, an English gentleman, Andrew McEwen, a sturdy Scotch chauffeur, and two Americans, one of them Robert Cardell Toms.

The ambulance run, which Burton made with Gilling, Andrew McEwen, and Robert Toms, was from Coxyde to Nieuport --- a distance of four miles. Nieuport was a shell-wrecked village by the sand dunes, and was held by the famous Fusiliers Marins the French Marines and by the Turcos. The wounded were brought in from the trenches to the dressing stations in the cellars of fallen houses. Here the Munro Corps found them and put them into the ambulance cars, and carried them to Zuydcoote Hospital --- fifteen miles away.

Burton was a delight to our little group. He had a literary background and talked well and with a light touch. He had come from a vigorous sojourn with Grenfell of Labrador. He was trained in medical relief work. He cheered us up among the flies and dirt of the Café du Sport and the straw billets of the peasant's house where we slept, with some twenty other men in service. I shall not forget how good it was to know him in the monotony and misery of that summer of 1915. War is made up of long periods of dreary waiting, and then a swift horror. In those times of waiting, he and I had good talks together. His companionship is one of the few pleasant and healing recollections I have of those evil years. No memory is more certain to live than that of one who gave courage and sanity among almost intolerable surroundings. I shall always remember Caspar Burton's humor and good will and the charm of his talk. He was gentle and kindly and brave.

Miss Oborne, at whose house 63 High Street, Oxford, he often lodged, writes:

"Well, he gave his life for us. He seemed to see things very clearly, because he had the gift of simplicity. As Father Congreve once said to me of Fr. O'Neill, 'He was the greatest of us, he was the most simple."

Mr. Boyce Allen, of Oxford, whose arguments convinced Caspar that he ought to get a commission, writes:

"Caspar's death from his wounds touches me nearly, for he sustained them while in the British service, which he entered so gallantly as a private long before there was any obligation whatever on him to concern himself in the war at all. I always felt his enlisting was a very noble act, for he faced not only danger, but, what most young men mind much more, extreme personal discomfort and hardship, and all for an ideal, higher even than patriotism. His example and that of other young Americans like him must have had an influence on bringing your country into the war and so saving the world from a German victory. You and Mrs. Burton have a proud memory of him. I can speak of that, but not of the sorrow you are bearing now. I can only say that I feel for you with all my heart."

Sir Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, who had recommended Caspar for a commission, writes:

"Your sympathy brought us much comfort, and specially helpful and sweet was the example of your dear and truly gallant and chivalrous son giving himself, in a sense more unselfishly if that were possible even than our own dear young fellows, because he would not see wrong done without trying to fight it. Then his modesty, his humour and his cheeriness, which seem more wonderful now when one realizes how much physically he had to fight against, were very engaging and delightful. I shall not soon forget him."

Lady Warren writes:

"How fine he was and what a joy that one so fine was your very own --- your precious possession. How you must live over the joy he gave you. It was so splendid of him, for he simply gave himself for the cause of right. I always felt how wonderful it was that he should have had the perception of what to do so quickly. That is really the wonder of it, it is so much easier to follow than to lead."

Miss Sellar, a friend in Edinburgh, who knew him when he was a Tommy there, writes:

"I have been so truly grieved to hear from Mrs. Haig Ferguson of the great sorrow that has come to you. I have so vivid a recollection of your son and of a remark he made to me with the simplicity of unconscious heroism. I was asking about the motive that had brought him to enter our Army and he said that while doing hospital work --- was it with the Belgians --- he realized how terrific the forces arrayed against the Allies were, and how perfect the organization, and he could no longer keep out of it, and this with the treble excuse --- that he was already doing splendid work, that he was of a different nationality, and that one little suspected, at the time, that he had a weak heart. But the instinct of sacrifice is too strong to a great-souled nature to be denied. With your sorrow must be mixed great pride and great thankfulness. This War has been a terrible testing time --- from first to last to him it was the nobly seized opportunity of showing the greatness of his nature. I am proud to think that for a time he was in one of our regiments, and that our men had the opportunity of coming in contact with such a character."

Beresford Melville, Chief Press Censor of England during the War, writes:

"I remember him well, his fine early dash to help us in our early difficulties, and his excellent military record, and his cheery optimism when I saw him in convalescence. You must indeed be proud-but Oh! how sad!"

CASPAR HENRY BURTON, JR., '09.

Editor, Harvard Alumni Bulletin:

THE rare privilege of viewing at close-hand the marvellous courage of Caspar Henry Burton, Jr., during his last illness was given only to his immediate family, close friends, and his physicians. Never did a patient win the hearts of his attending physicians through an exhibition of pure pluck more than did this gallant Harvard soldier, the latest to join the already large group of Harvard Dead.

I wish to take this opportunity of letting "Cap's" former classmates and friends know a little of the fearless courage possessed by him. It will be remembered that Burton spent one year in the Harvard Medical School after his graduation from College in 1909. At the end of that year he developed a septic sore throat which was followed by an attack of acute rheumatic fever, in the course of which his heart became affected. He showed the first of his remarkable pluck, which was to stand him in such good stead later, by the way he met this heart trouble; for he remained in bed flat on his back for almost three months in order to rest up his heart. As he so characteristically said, so many times, "I know just enough medicine to know how to treat my own heart right." Shortly after this, he went to Labrador with Grenfell and worked like anybody else, never mentioning his heart trouble. He never refused to do the hardest type of physical work.

At the outbreak of the war he enlisted in the British Army as a "Tommy" and after one year of the hardest kind of training was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant. It was grimly amusing to hear him tell how he hoodwinked and talked down the objections of various grades of army doctors who wanted to throw him out on account of his heart.

That he had many such experiences can be readily understood when it is remembered that during his service in the British Army he was in seven different hospitals, a list of which follows: the Oxford Hospital, the Edinburgh Hospital, a casualty clearing station near the front in France where he was detained two weeks owing to the severity of his chest wounds, the Duchess of Westminster Hospital at Le Touquet, the London Hospital, the Princess Christian Hospital, and the Reading Military Hospital. In fact he was almost continuously in the hospitals from May, 1917, until September, 1917.

When the United States entered the war, "Cap" again showed the stuff that was in him by resigning his commission as second lieutenant in the 4th King's (Liverpool) Regiment and seeking to enter the Army of his own country. "With a chest full of junk and a heart that was not working right," to use his own phrase, he applied for examination before an American Army doctor. After a long and stormy session, "Cap" emerged victorious, simply because, as he said, "I knew more about hearts than the fellow who examined me." He received a commission as first lieutenant and was assigned to the headquarters of the Second Army Corps. He served throughout the rest of the war without complaining, although he suffered almost continuously with his breathing, a fact of which no one knew until after his discharge in March, 1919.

I do not believe there is a finer display of courage than "Cap" Burton's grit in going through the entire war in the service of two countries with a damaged heart which was made decidedly worse, not only by the hardships of army life, but also by his mutilating wounds of the lungs; all of this hastened his end. It can be truly said that Caspar Henry Burton, Jr., sacrificed his heart and thereby his life for his country.

His Physician,
J. VICTOR GREENEBAUM, '08, M.D. '11.

Part of an address given by Father Powell on Good Friday on the Sixth Word from the Cross:

IT IS FINISHED

IT is but a few days ago that a friend of ours whom some of you knew, Caspar Burton, a man of thirty-odd, fell asleep in Christ. Life had often seemed to him but a sad and evil thing. He thought that he had accomplished nothing. He thought that everything to which he had set his hand had failed, and yet now his life is seen by us, his friends, to have been a conspicuous and triumphant success.

So distinguished a person as Dr. Grenfell, wherever he goes, refers to the astonishing work that Caspar Burton did for men in Labrador, how he lived there a life of hardship, a life of suffering and of endurance, a life indeed of utter self-forgetfulness. It is true that he often did think of himself. He always considered himself to be selfish, sometimes even to those who loved him best he seemed to be so, but it is true that in his greater moments he entirely forgot himself, and those greater moments made by far the larger part of his life in latter years.

When the war broke out there was no hesitation. There was no waiting. He saw his duty clearly. He must take sides. He had no doubt about what he ought to do, and at first, I think I am right in saying that he went in the only way that seemed possible, as a member of the Red Cross. But quickly he understood that he must fight, and to understand that was for him equivalent to a decision. He enlisted as an English Tommy. Then there followed the training, the endless marches and tramps, carrying eighty or ninety pounds on his back, the bunking with the English privates, the sharing of their entire life, shirking nothing, doing it all with amazing courage, playing it as wholeheartedly as in former years he had played golf or tramped after game in the Canadian woods.

Then he was wounded. Most men would have been entirely incapacitated and would have felt that they had done their full duty, but not so this man. As soon as America came into the war he must fight with his own countrymen, and with a failing heart, with lungs still full of shrapnel, as we learned afterwards, he faked symptoms so that American Army doctors should not turn him down.

When the war ended he came home and started in business, a thing that naturally he loathed, but he had a clear vision of duty. Then soon followed sixteen weeks of intolerable suffering, all borne without a complaint, sixteen weeks of horrible pain under the microscopic gaze of friends who came from far and wide to see him. Always he played the game, always pretending that it was less than it really was. The nearest he ever came to crying out was once when his father came into the room, and presently, with a smile, he remarked in a casual way, "I hate to say it, Dad, but I think I could stand it better if you would go out of the room." It added to the pain having one whom he loved see his suffering.

Apparent failure is part of the cup that we may all have to drink. Christ on Calvary seemed to those who watched a failure. His whole life must have seemed to His friends a failure. So it was with our friend. But in his own way and measure, like Christ, he died that others might live.

Let this last letter come as a benediction from the greathearted pastor and prelate, His Grace, the Archbishop of York:

Largie Castle,   
Tayinloan, Argyll, 
8 April, 1920.

DEAR BURTON,

I AM here for a few days' rest and have just heard of your great sorrow. Please let me send you, and through you to Mrs. Burton and Spence, my heartfelt sympathy with you. The pathos of it all comes home to me when I remember all the loving care you had for your boy during the War. But he was at the post of honour at a great time: so his life has not been lived in vain: and now God will perfect it and train it for still higher service. May He give to you and Mrs. Burton strength and faith and hope ....

Yours in sincerest sympathy,

COSMO EBOR.

Caspar himself must end this volume of his letters. Just before going into action one night he wrote to Mother, "Death doesn't seem as dreadful to me as failure to do whatever job you are given to do."