Sometimes, after listening to a sustained
invective concerned with a dull and, on the face of it, absurd subject
known as military "courtesy," he suspected that the dim purpose of the
war was to let the regular army officers--men with the mentality and
aspirations of schoolboys--have their fling with some real slaughter. He
was being grotesquely sacrificed to the twenty-year patience of
a Hopkins!
Of his three tent-mates--a flat-faced, conscientious objector from
Tennessee, a big, scared Pole, and the disdainful Celt whom he had sat
beside on the train--the two former spent the evenings in writing
eternal letters home, while the Irishman sat in the tent door whistling
over and over to himself half a dozen shrill and monotonous bird-calls.
It was rather to avoid an hour of their company than with any hope of
diversion that, when the quarantine was lifted at the end of the week,
he went into town. He caught one of the swarm of jitneys that overran
the camp each evening, and in half an hour was set down in front of the
Stonewall Hotel on the hot and drowsy main street.
Under the gathering twilight the town was unexpectedly attractive.
Pages:
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432