PERSONAL charity, I have always realized, is a difficult thing. But always supposed that patriotic charity was comparatively simple — until that strange conversation, which confused me so at the time and has haunted me ever since. Now it has all come up again, and I wonder and wonder.

It was two winters ago, and we were huddling anxiously around the radio. Things were beginning. We looked out at the palm trees, stiff against the breeze from the Gulf of Mexico, realizing that it was cold in northern Europe. The ladies began reminiscent murmurs of the ‘Great War.’

‘Goodness, how we worked!’ they sighed happily. (For they had been very happy; released energies; responsibility; the furious lust of unnecessary, inherited housekeeping driven out, now, by a real need; passionate, out-of-date economies sanctified; servants and married children left to themselves, at last.)

‘Are the “Blue Birds" still going?’

‘Oh, yes, we never give up. But I never thought we’d ever have to work again, that way. It seems terrible to think they haven’t outgrown war, yet, over there!’

You’re lying, I thought, but you don’t know it. You’ll grow ten years younger, as before.

The name, of course, was not ‘Blue Birds,’ but it will do. Their city was one of those prosperous, friendly Middle Western metropolitan villages where they build and occupy ‘homes,’ and the grandchildren come back for Thanksgiving. They are renowned for big sleek motors with all the new gadgets, community chests well over the top, feathery layer cakes, and visiting English lecturers.

These ladies were educated, practical, kindly, and efficient. When the Blue Birds worked, they worked. They were a voluntary, self-directed organization, with no connection with the Red Cross. They did their own good in their own way. They liked it better — more individual.

Of course, they knitted. Knitting, clearly, is the leading secondary sexual characteristic — not what any of the Huxleys thought. Eve, I am sure, took to her first sock when the flaming sword closed Paradise Gate; and Cleopatra, as her galley turned tail, began with Charmian their sweaters for the crew. Mrs. Noah and the girls probably did wristlets for expectant dachshund mothers.

But suddenly, across the busy, heartening confusion, came the Armistice. The Blue Birds were 6000 socks ahead of the game! All that good wool.

It didn’t daunt them, of course. They saw their duty and they did it. Spring and fall, a special committee took turns at airing and moth-balling the socks. Dull, yes. But‘who sweeps a room as for Thy laws . . . ‘ It went on for six years. You see, they were not their personal socks. They had to.

The young son of one of the Blue Birds listened idly to his mother’s troubles.

‘It seems to me I cannot go through with it again! ‘

‘Why don’t you get rid of ‘em?’

‘Darling, how can we? They were given!’

‘Yeah. Would you take a quarter apiece for them?’

‘ Would we? Why, that would be . . .’

He ran into New York, in the spring vacation. He had an interview with a luxury outfitter whom I will call Mr. Fitchcrombie.

‘They must be graded,’ said Mr. Fitchcrombie. ‘I will give you a dollar and a half for the perfects, which I will sell for three dollars. For the seconds, fifty cents, which I will sell for a dollar. For the thirds, twentyfive cents, which I will sell for fifty cents to logging camps. Anything to keep dry. Can you grade them?’

‘You bet,’ said the son, and he hired his roommate to help him. They worked hard.

They handed the ecstatic Blue Birds a check for $1500.

‘My boy,’ said Mr. Blue Bird, with casual pride, ‘supported himself, practically, his last two years at college. The American Way, if you ask me.’

‘That’s the stuff,’ said the other male Blue Birds enviously.

And now the Blue Birds have $1500, to buy wool at cost price for the Next War. They will provide the needles, if you wish to learn.

Is there something wrong with this picture? Or is there? You see, everybody is pleased. The Blue Birds, the boy, Mr. Fitchcrombie. Lots of refugees, too, probably. And even if the ship goes down, the mermaids can unravel it all and knit it up again: helmets for whales.

Look ahead with me. The movies in our breastpockets, radio in the fountain pen. Meals are capsules. There is no colitis, nor customs duties. Everybody lives forever — if he wants to. Our clothes are of glass. Babies come in cellophane, F. O. B. But there is a little difficulty between Sirius and Vega, it seems. And quick as a flash the women mobilize — and begin to knit. The distinctive, planetary action.

An oblate spheroid, slightly flattened at the poles? Nonsense, it is a big, whirling ball of cosmic wool! It was the projecting needle that Peary was looking for and Byrd found. It whirls through the ether, unraveling as it spins . . . the Milky Way! So if there is another wTar in heaven, the lady archangels will never lack for material. And the interplanetary ice crystals are probably moth balls!

JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON