For the parents the life is not too sad.They have had their day, and are, perhaps, a little glad in their hearts of a quiet old age, away from the heat and sweat of the battle; but for the younger generation it is annihilation.Each year their circle grows smaller.Death takes away one member after another of the family, until one is left alone in a foreign land with no ties around her, or with her far-away "home," the latter more a name now than a reality.
A year or two ago I was taking luncheon with our consul at his primitive villa, an hour's ride from the city of Tangier, a ride made on donkey-back, as no roads exist in that sunny land.After our coffee and cigars, he took me a half-hour's walk into the wilderness around him to call on his nearest neighbors, whose mode of existence seemed a source of anxiety to him.I found myself in the presence of two American ladies, the younger being certainly not less than seventy-five.To my astonishment I found they had been living there some thirty years, since the death of their parents, in an isolation and remoteness impossible to describe, in an Arab house, with native servants, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." Yet these ladies had names well known in New York fifty years ago.
The glimpse I had of their existence made me thoughtful as I rode home in the twilight, across a suburb none too safe for strangers.