The Camp Fire Girls Behind the Lines
entirely unnecessary grounds. The fact is inexplicable to me. When my son was born my wife and I were no longer young and she died a short time after. Felipe has grown up here with me, with his friends and his flowers and his music, to which he is sincerely devoted, and nothing has ever been required of him. I knew he was indolent and selfish perhaps, but until the United States entered the war I failed to appreciate that Felipe was not a man. Another circumstance which has added to our difficulty, instead of clearing it away, is that Felipe and I have recently inherited a large sum of money. Until recently, as our home must have revealed to you, we have been poor and not very industrious. Now our inheritance has made my son more than ever eager for a life of ease and pleasure. He has been planning to fix up the old place until it looks as it did many years ago. He wishes also to study singing, as he has a really beautiful voice, and has been talking of going to Spain, now that the other European countries are at present out of the question. You can see I scarcely know what to do. Felipe's exemption claim is almost sure to be denied, and yet I cannot discuss the matter with our friends and neighbors. I do not wish to prejudice them against my boy. What is it I can do, Mrs. Burton, when I confess to you that I appear to have no influence with my son upon the subject of his responsibility to his country?"

Mrs. Burton continued looking down upon the extraordinary view.

The hills toward the east were black and eerie, the sea to the west a shining mirror, with the valleys like shadows in between.

"Mr. Morris, I wish you and your son would come over to our camp some day soon," she remarked later with apparent irrelevance. "Of course I wish you to know my sister, but I should also like you to meet her sons. One of them, Dan Webster, is one of the finest type of American boys. He is strong and clean and good looking and has no dearer wish in life than to be allowed to volunteer. In another year I presume my sister will be forced to give her consent—Dan is only seventeen at present. My other nephew, Billy—well, I hardly know how to describe Billy, because he is like no other human being I have ever known. He is one of the most impossible and obstinate boys in the world, and one never knows from one moment to the next what he is going to do or say. At present he is the trial of all our lives at Sunrise camp; he has proclaimed himself a pacifist, and feels called upon to convert everybody he meets. He is filled with Tolstoi's beautiful theories of universal peace. As he is still too young for the draft his ideas so 
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