The occasion was the last Grand Council Fire of Hiawatha Institute for
Camp Fire Girls located in the Allegheny city of Westmoreland. The
classroom work had been rushed a day ahead, examinations were made
almost perfunctory, and for them also the clock had been turned
twenty-four hours forward. The curriculum was finished, and the day
just closed had been devoted to preparation for a Grand Council
wind-up for the fifteen Fires of the Institute, which would "break
ranks" on the following day and scatter in all directions for home and
the Christmas holidays.
And there was literal truth in this "break ranks" method of dismissing
school at the Institute. Since the United States entered the European
war on the side of the anti-frightfulness allies, Hiawatha had become
something of a military school. The girls actually drilled with guns,
and they would shoot those guns with all the grim fatality of so many
boys. Not that they expected to go to war and descend into the
trenches and fire hail-storms of steel-coated death-messengers at the
enemy. Oh, no. They might, but they were sensible enough not to let
their imagination carry them so far.
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