She stood watching
The
VINEGAR
SAINT
By
HUGHES MEARNS
Author of “Richard Richard”
Illustrated by
Ralph L. Boyer
THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA
1919
COPYRIGHT
1919 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
The Vinegar Saint
TO
FAGLEY
“Someone must keep watch lest the Heavens fall!”
—The Vinegar Saint.
POSTSCRIPT
(For aren’t all prefaces really postscripts?)
THIS chronicle of Gorgas and her friends waswithin sight of the end when out of Germanycame the incredible news of war. Twenty-fiveyears earlier Bardek had fought “the bigAustrian” because “he had spoke against the French”;all of which the present scribe had duly writ down, butonly as one tells of ancient passions or historic lovesand hates. Who, outside of unspeakable Germany,was prepared for the shock of the world war? Then,when our own boys were moving across the seas—justbecause one had “spoke against the French”—the historyof Gorgas and the Vinegar Saint was put aside,along with other matter that we once thought important;and the present historian was standing reveille,watch and guard on a scrubby hill leagues from home.Finally comes the collapse of the mad German dream,as abruptly as it began, and things of peace and sanityemerge, including this story of the Vinegar Saint.
Well, good is good, and evil is evil; and there is tobe no compromise nor confusion of the two. Suchis the conclusion of the victory just accomplished—whichis only what the Vinegar Saint had contendedall along! It did not seem to need a world war toprove so true a truth.
[ii]The chronicler cannot resist giving Captain “Chuck”Williams’ account of a late meeting with Bardek.Slim and spruce he was; clean shaven—to preventthe white stubble from giving his years away; a majorin the brilliant full dress of the French, one of thatgay band, veterans all, who visited America duringthe early days of our