|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
|
blame. It--whatever it was--was responsible for him, he said. There lay the fault. The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young man to be some- thing much finer than stout fighting. Heroes, he thought, could find excuses in that long seething lane. They could retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars. He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste to force their way to grim chances of death. As he watched his envy grew until he thought that he wished to change lives with one of them. He would have liked to have used a tremendous force, he said, throw off himself and become a better. Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in himself, came to him--a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward and a broken blade high--a blue, determined figure standing before a crimson and steel assault, getting calmly killed on a high place before the eyes of all. He thought of the magnificent pathos of his dead body. These thoughts uplifted him. He felt the quiver of war desire. In his ears, he heard the ring of victory. He knew the frenzy of a rapid successful charge. The music of the trampling feet, the sharp voices, the clanking arms of the column near him made him soar on the red wings of war. For a few moments he was sublime. He thought that he was about to start for the front. Indeed, he saw a picture of himself, dust- stained, haggard, panting, flying to the front at the proper moment to seize and throttle the dark, leering witch of calamity. Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him. He hesitated, balancing awkwardly on one foot. He had no rifle; he could not fight with his hands, said he resentfully to his plan. Well, |
