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PAGE 2-B—THE BULLETIN, December 24, 1960
| Joyce Kilmer At Christmas 1
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JOYCE KILMER
SEASON’S
GREETINGS
FROM
TIM’S
AMOCO
2598 Ceniral Ave.
REG. 3-9192
AUGUSTA, GA.
By Dan Doran
Joyce Kilmer loved feast
days. He discovered them be
fore he joined the Catholic
Church. Afterward he enjoyed
them more.
“It is very nice,” he wrote
in his last Christmas letter,
“the way feasts seem to be
marked.”
This was just like him. He
carried to a soldier’s grave an
impish, boyish spirit that
took delight in hobgoblins or
mused much on houses with
nobody in them, or discovered
romances in the wares of a
delicatessan store or snatched
a theme for verse at tales of
eerie midnight fishermen
smoking and taking swigs on
creeks their mortal frames had
long since left behind.
CHRISTMAS EXPERT
On Christmas, that best lov
ed feast day, he was a sort of
an expert.
In “The Art of Christmas
Giving” he could wander in
such company as St. Nicholas
of Bari, Emerson, Lowell, Wil
liam Jennings Bryan and even
Mr. Blinker or your Sunday
School teacher.
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1401 Monte Sano Ave.
“You have hitherto,” he re
ports, “regarded Mr. Blinker,
the notorious efficiency engi
neer, with disfavor.
“You have regarded him as
a prosaic theorist — a curdled
mass of statistics.
“On Christmas morning you
find he has presented you, not
with an illuminated ‘Rules for
Eliminating leisure,’ or a set of
household ledgers, or an alarm
clock, but with a cocktail set,
or a pool table, or an angora
cat or some other inefficient
obiect.
“At once your opinion of Mr.
Blinker changes for the bet
ter. He assumes a new and
radiant personality.
“Your Sunday School teach
er has always exhibited to you
virtues which you do not en
joy.
“She has seemed "to you
lacking in magnetism. If she
gives you for Christmas a
Bible or a tale of juvenile vir
tue, you will write her a
graceful note of thanks — at
your mother’s dictation — but
your affection for the estim
able lady will not increase.
But if your Sunday School
teacher gives you a Bowie
knife or a revolver, or a set
of Deadwood Dick novels,
then how suddenly will the
nobility of your Sunday School
teacher be revealed.”
Kilmer had a special devo
tion — and for good reasons —
to the Holy Innocents.
In 1913 he had written Fa
ther James J. Daly, S.J., at
Prairie du Chien, the seat of
Campion College, asking him
to pray for his daughter Rose
who had been stricken with
infantile paralysis.
“Just off Broadway,” he re
vealed, “on the way from the
Hudson tube to the Times
Building there is a church call
ed the Church of the Holy In
nocents. Well, every morning
for months I stopped on my
way to the office and prayed
in this church for faith. When
faith did come, it came, I
think by way of my little
paralyzed daughter. Her life
less hands led me; I think her
tiny still feet know beautiful
paths.”
When he and his wife, Aline,
became Catholics a Tittle be
fore Christmas in 1913 he
wrote commenting that Father
Cronyn, who baptized them,
might have been disappointed
that they did not show any
emotion at the ceremony and
explaining that their chief sen
sation was merely that of com
fort in a feeling that they were
now where they belonged and
that it was a very pleasant
feeling.
Now that he was converted,
Father Daly sent him some
Christmas cards and medals.
In reply he wrote;
“I did not know such beau
tiful cards were made. How is
it that in Prairie du Chien, a
place of which the name sug
gests Indians and tomahawks
and Deadwood Dick stages,
you can procure better cards
than I can get in New York?
The medals are highly valued
—the workmanship in them is
so admirable — and they shall
eaJon S (jreetinffS
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Merry Christmas
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CHRISTMAS IN JAPAN
Although the New Year is the greatest holiday celebration in Japan, all Christians honor the
Divine Infant in the sacred manner intended. This scene in a Japanese home would seem to
indicate that the children’s celebration is very much like that of American youngsters. Notice
the boy at the right absorbed in his toy train.
be worn properly as soon as
I can afford to buy some sil
ver chains, which will be next
Tuesday.”
ENLISTMENT
The close bond that existed
between Joyce Kilmer and his
wife should certainly have
made the Christmas season
for them a glorious adventure,
especially when they had the
children with them. In a happy
mood she once wrote:
If people should ask me, I
always relate
I have four nice children and
hope to have eight,
And though my four
children are certain
to please,
Who knows hut the rest will
be better than these?
With the sinking of the
“Tuscania” off the Coast of
Ireland and Joyce Kilmer’s
great surge of emotion that
impelled the composition of
“The White Ships and the
Red” there was only one an
swer to what seemed a per
sonal challenge and a bugle
call. He must enlist.
To be with the Fighting
Sixty-Ninth was to him a great
pleasure. He had been muster
ed into another regiment but
he succeeded in effecting a
change because he liked to be
among the Irish who came
from New York.
His only pang was his sep
aration from his wife and chil
dren. This is reflected in al
most every letter from the
camps. But it is done so in a
capricious, matter-of-fact, vein
which give an insight into
one who accepted God’s will
with the utmost resignation.
Perhaps it is best pictured in
the incident which Robert
Cortes Holliday, his friend and
biographer, details vividly.
Kilmer appeared at Holli
day’s office in New York clad
in uniform.
“It was in what followed,”
writes Holliday in his book,
“that he displayed the most
extraordinary measure of spi
ritual stature that I have ever
observed in any man or read
of in any book.”
Settling himself, as was his
wont, in Holliday’s chair, he
at once demanded some pipe
tobacco, and, since his host had
none, very properly denounc
ed him in emphatic terms.
Then he said:
“Bob, my affairs are some
what in disarray.”
Holliday, thinking that he
wanted to borrow two dollars,
or even something more than
that, asked him his trouble.
“Well,” answered Kilmer in
his ordinary way, “several
days ago Rose died. Yester
day, Christopher, my son was
born. Kenton is with my wife
at her mother’s. My family is
in fact very much scattered.
I’m expecting to go to France
in a few days and I have many
other difficulties.”
Thus he summed up, as a
soldier might report, the trag
edies that would probably
evoked, from other souls, an
outburst of emotion. His vib
rant faith had given him such
a confidence in God’s provi
dence that no hardships or
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sorrows seemed to touch him.
ENJOYED PENANCES
He was enigmatic. He com
plained about the penances
that priests gave.
“I wish,” he once wrote,
“that I had a stern medieval
confessor —• the sort that one
reads about in anti-Catholic
books — who would inflict
real penances. The saying of
Our Fathers and Hail Marys
is no penance — it’s a delight.”
That delight to him was borne
out in his poem “The Rosary”
for which he was awarded a
first prize in a competition
among many Catholic writers.
Yet the fluid intellect that
could pen passionate lines as
“Rouge Bouquet” or find such
inspiration in “Trees” or con
jure up such a delightful vista
as heaven as in “The Blue
Valentine” must have evoked
responses in the souls of mil
lions.
I remember the day when
news of his death was flash
ed over the wires to all the
great syndicates that he had
been reported killed in battle.
I was writing war news for
the Hearst papers and my ed
itor, Justin McGrath, asked me
to turn out something special
on him.
The deadline was in half an
hour. The essential news, a
meager flash; was already on
the street. I started four times
in the first five minutes and
each time threw the copy
away. Like all reporters on
such stories I was trying to
write something with a heart-
throb in it. But it wouldn’t
come. So I merely wrote a few
lines of verse — lines which
came to me in about ten min
utes:
SO YOU ARE GONE,
OLD FRIEND!
I say old friend, although
I never knew you,
Although I never held your
outstretched hand
But just because it seems
that it was through you
There are so many things I
understand.
So many things. Who else
but you caught sight of,
Old houses by the side of
railway tracks
And thought of folks who
lived in them to write of—
Like eerie fishermen at
midnight snacks?
(Continued on Page 3)
Elliott Sons
Walton Printing Company
117 Eighth St.
Augusta, Ga.
HENRY T. JONES, Prop.
“We Print to Please”
Ijcrrij (Christmas
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40, ■' Lis this festive season gets
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COUNTY BANK
AUGUSTA, GEORGIA