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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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interrupted the other. "I didn't come here to walk. I could 'ave walked to home--'round an' 'round the barn, if I jest wanted to walk." The tall one, red-faced, swallowed another sandwich as if taking poison in despair. But gradually, as he chewed, his face became again quiet and contented. He could not rage in fierce argument in the presence of such sand- wiches. During his meals he always wore an air of blissful contemplation of the food he had swal- lowed. His spirit seemed then to be communing with the viands. He accepted new environment and circum- stance with great coolness, eating from his haver- sack at every opportunity. On the march he went along with the stride of a hunter, object- ing to neither gait nor distance. And he had not raised his voice when he had been ordered away from three little protective piles of earth and stone, each of which had been an engineer- ing feat worthy of being made sacred to the name of his grandmother. In the afternoon the regiment went out over the same ground it had taken in the morn- ing. The landscape then ceased to threaten the youth. He had been close to it and become familiar with it. When, however, they began to pass into a new region, his old fears of stupidity and in- competence reassailed him, but this time he dog- gedly let them babble. He was occupied with his problem, and in his desperation he concluded that the stupidity did not greatly matter. Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get killed directly and end his troubles. Regarding death thus out of the corner of his eye, he conceived it to be noth- ing but rest, and he was filled with a momen- tary astonishment that he should have made an |
