The Camp Fire Girls in Glorious France
Margaret Vandercook
language
(Transcript, July 27, 2014)
The Camp Fire Girls in Glorious France by Margaret VandercookOne afternoon in March, the windows of an old French farmhouse stood open, the curtains blowing in the breeze like white flags of truce, while from indoors came the murmur of a number of voices, girls’ voices, gay and animated and speaking in English, not French.The next moment there was a brief silence; afterwards one of them began singing, with an odd foreign accent, a song strange to hear in this French countryside, the song of an American camp fire:“The fire of our camp is burning, Sing sweet, sing low, sing far, From the long, long trail returning Led by the evening star. “Bright is our fireside’s glowing, Sing sweet, sing low, sing high, Fragrant the wind now blowing Over the fields nearby. “Pleasant shall be our resting, Sing sweet, sing low, sing clear, Others life’s storms are breasting, Ours is the home fire dear. “Yet what is the night wind sighing? Sing sweet, sing low, sing true, The ill, the hungry and dying, Are they not calling you? “Back over the long trail moving, Sing sweet, sing low, sing wide, Following the law of loving, France, we come to thy side!”A murmur of applause, and then a group of girls in Camp Fire costumes stepped out of the house and into the front yard. The March afternoon was unusually warm with a flood of pale sunshine covering the landscape, the sky was a delicate blue, the clouds changing into fantastic shapes. Beyond, the open country was showing little patches of green in the upturned fields; on the branches of a few newly planted fruit trees were tiny buds.