The Story of the Christmas Ship

The Vision Splendid IT CAME about very suddenly. I was sitting in my room one hot summer afternoon, looking at the pale blue wall paper and listening to the whirl of the electric fan. It was the 27th of A ugust. I heard the clock strike four in the drawing room below. How hot it was! How stifiingly, unbearably hot! It was very quiet. The stillness was delightful. My house stood on such a steep hill, we seldom heard even automobiles. Suddenly, from thinking gratefully of the peace in which I lived, my thoughts flew without warning to the trenches of Europe, and instantly war in all its horrors took possession of my soul. My imagination is at once my best friend and my deadliest enemy. It obsesses me and wrecks my peace for hours at a time, causing me to live the lives of people I never have seen and never expect to see; but their sufferings are mine while the dream lasts. And so I began to experience every horror I had read about or imagined. I was in those sun-baked, water-logged trenches. I was in that bodily suffering and that mental anguish of those helpless men, driven out to meet death as best they might only avoid it they might not. I wondered how I would feel if I knew I was going to be killed and at any moment! I know now. I went through it all the vicarious anguish for the helpless ones left behind.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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