GREGORY AND THE SCUTTLE
BY CHARLES HASKINS TOWNSEND
THIS is a tale of the warm sea-tides that daily and nightly flood the channels among the Bermuda Islands. I had almost written it 'The Scuttle and Gregory,' but it was Gregory who carried on the campaign aggressively and finally triumphed with the trap-net, so that the sea-monster was dragged away into captivity.
At our first meeting, when I described the creature whose subjection I wished to accomplish, Gregory said, 'That’s the scuttle.' I suggested the word cuttle, as, perhaps, more appropriate, but it was not appreciated. The scuttle by any other name could never be satisfactory to him. Quibbling over a mere title seemed unnecessary, so I made an effort to get down to essentials and adopted Gregory’s word. As a result of our conference, Gregory took certain implements of capture and sailed out of the bay; only to return, after a considerable absence, with an empty boat.
He had, however, matured certain plans which it seemed reasonable to follow out. It appeared that a combination of forces was desirable, so I contracted for the services of both Gregory and his boat, and we set about the circumvention of the scuttle by fair measure or foul.
As we sailed away in the light morning breeze, Gregory expatiated upon the subtlety of the scuttle and the labors of the black toilers of the sea, who had sought to capture him.
'How big is he?' I inquired.
'Not too big, sir,' said Gregory, holding up a short oar by way of suggesting dimensions.
I was interested, for I had read, in a book by one Hugo, how a man had once entered a sea-cave, and had had a fearful struggle with the creature. Respecting the truth of this, however, there is reasonable doubt, although I know of the capture of an octopus of the seas about Vancouver Island, which actually measured several oars' lengths across its outspread arms. But all this is not telling the story of Gregory’s search.
The scuttle eluded us for many days, artfully removing choice foods from the snares we set for him; but we sometimes caught faint glimpses of him down under the over-hanging borders of coral reefs, where he sat in shadowy caverns, thrusting forth his horrifying arms to seize the unwary sea-people.
While Gregory with great caution moved the boat close by the rocks, I peered constantly through the water-glass into the grayish depths where the fierce-jawed moray has his hunting-grounds, and where the sharp-stinging medusa drifts along, moving out of the way of no creature whatsoever. It was an enchanted world that lay beneath us, and I saw many strange things which cannot be described here.
But I must explain about the water-glass, an article with which all fishermen of the Bermudas are familiar. Like many another indispensable thing, it is of simple construction, being nothing more than a wooden bucket with a bottom of glass. By placing it on the surface of the water and inserting one’s face in the open top, it is possible to see distinctly whatever may be beneath.
We worked our way at times into small bays where green sea-lettuce lay in the shallow water in masses. These we overturned with our oar and boat-hook, hoping to come upon the wily object of our pursuit.
The lair of the scuttle, according to Gregory, may be discovered by certain unmistakable signs. It is the accustomed way of the creature to drag his prey to his hiding-place, there to devour it at leisure. Crafty in the capture of his victims, and wily in the concealment of himself from observation, he makes no attempt to hide the débris of his feasts. He thrusts his garbage forth from his stronghold, unconcerned as to where it fall, provided the entrance be clear for his own movements. If he has feasted high on lobster or oyster, crab or clam, a mountain of shells proclaims his lair. The heap may grow until it would fill a basket as large as a man could lift.
Knowing his weakness for these dainties, Gregory gathered a supply, hoping to lure the scuttle into his power. He did, in fact, nearly succeed on one occasion by lowering a tempting morsel near where the creature lay concealed. A long arm snatched and held the bait until the sharp, hidden hook tore loose, and Gregory almost fell over as he jerked the stout line.
This method might have succeeded if I had not been anxious to take my departure from the islands and so urged haste. Whereupon Gregory, who was big and powerful and did not fear a personal encounter with the scuttle, became more aggressive.
On the following day, when the tide was motionless and the water glassy, he saw the scuttle disappear under a narrow ledge a couple of fathoms down in the clear, greenish channel. He was overboard in an instant, and with a few quick strokes reached the bottom. Looking down through the water-glass I could see the whitish soles of his bare feet as he made tremendous upward thrusts with his legs.
The scuttle was disturbed by the suddenness of the attack, and as he had not selected a favorable place for concealment, decided to make off, and lost no time in doing so. He may have caught sight of the whites of Gregory’s determined eyes. He was barely quicker, however, than the quick arm of the man, and might have been seized had he not played a scurvy trick: the water suddenly turned black—black as Gregory’s own face.
It appears that the creature always bears a sac of inky fluid ready in an instant to darken the water all about him, and can dart away under an impenetrable cloud of his own conjuring. This characteristic, which I had hitherto read of, I now saw verified. By magic the scuttle had disappeared, and a moment later there was a porpoise-like snort as Gregory’s head popped above the surface.
Later, we had proof also of the scuttle’s mysterious power of suddenly changing his color. Like the chameleon, he may appear conspicuously dark at one moment and inconspicuously pale at another, against the grayish, ragged wall of the coral reef. This I made sure of as our boat came close to another of his hiding-places. Although he was in full sight, it took me some minutes to realize that the ghostly outlines pointed out to me were not a part of the gray background of jagged rock. He can, moreover, instantly turn brown or become spotted, as I later saw with my own eyes after we had got him into our power.
It was clear that there was nothing more to be done in that locality; so Gregory clambered aboard and we held counsel together as the boat drifted broadside up the channel with the tide; and the earnestness of the black man made so profound an impression on me that when we parted in the evening I was not without hope that my mission would eventually be crowned with success.
But the next day we were again disappointed. Gregory dived and had the scuttle in his arms almost before I could brush from my eyes the salt water his splash threw over me. As he came up alongside, however, trouble began, for the scuttle got a grip on the bottom of the boat with his many sucker-covered arms, and, while Gregory was getting his breath, his hold slipped, and again the creature was off. Just how he managed to disappear so suddenly remains a mystery; neither Gregory, who went under again, nor I, who promptly reached for the water-glass, got the faintest glimpse of him. Doubtless he shot away body foremost, after the manner of his kind, every one of his eight arms contributing to the haste of his departure.
Failing in all these manœuvres, I began to scout among lonely pools under the cliffs, where, if cautious, one may see strange sea-folk when the tide is out. Gregory, left alone with his stratagems, disappeared for a few days. The last glimpse I had of him was of a very black man with a very earnest face, loading a huge wicker contrivance into a boat. I had considerable faith in his resourcefulness, for he knew the reefs and caves as well as did the scuttle himself.
But my solitary patrol of the rocky shore proved fruitless, and I was glad, two days later, to find Gregory sitting on a stone wall down by the little dock, swinging his bare feet and enjoying the hot sunshine, but not much inclined to talk. He told me that he had gone to a distant island village in search of a large trap-device used for catching fish. This, with the help of another fisherman, he had lowered into a deep cleft among the reefs two or three miles to the westward. I was to go with him the next day to see if by any possibility the scuttle had been deluded into entering it, for it was baited with something which the always hungry monster was pretty sure to investigate.
We were off early in the morning, but made slow progress, as there was little wind. It was fully three hours before we arrived at the sunken trap, which Gregory located by the bearings of certain distant cliffs, for there were few portions of the reef showing at high tide. The breeze being light, the stone killick with line attached was thrown overboard without lowering the sail. Through the water-glass we made out the framework of the big trap on the bottom. I let out more anchor-line, the sloop drifting astern until we were nearly over the trap, when Gregory yelled that the scuttle was ours.
He let down a grapple, and after some heaving and hauling we dragged the cumbersome contrivance on board. The hatch over the water-filled well of the sloop was shoved back to make ready for the entrance of our captive. I kept a firm grip on the trap while Gregory, all the while shouting instructions to me and abuse at the scuttle, undid the fastenings at one corner. It took a deal of punching with an oar to dislodge the creature, whose eight arms were reaching in all directions. When one of them thrust through an opening and took a turn around Gregory’s bare arm, the whites of the man’s eyes were even more conspicuous than his white teeth. There was a ripping sound as he tore the arm away from that sucker-covered arm of the scuttle, but no harm was done to either combatant.
What with the lurching of the sloop, the rocking of the big unsteady trap, the resistance of our captive, and Gregory’s shouting, there was considerable turmoil for so limited an area as that we occupied on our small craft. The scuttle was gradually crowded down, and was presently forced to take refuge in the well to escape the black man’s oar. In the bottom of the trap lay the empty shell of the great crayfish which had tempted the creature to his undoing. With the hatch back in place, and the trap lashed against the windward side of the mast, our work was done.
After a pull on the sheet, I took the tiller and my companion rested from his labors; but his tongue was loosened, and by the time we came to anchor in the twilight, he had said more about the scuttle than I have been able to recall, and a good deal that I am not hopeful of being able to verify. Nevertheless, he had earned his reward, and as the lights were beginning to glimmer around the harbor, he went to his home with a comfortable jingle of coins in his pocket.
When the steamer sailed away to the north, the scuttle was a captive on board, staring with unwinking eyes at the passengers who came to gaze at him. He escaped from confinement twice during the voyage, and we had no small difficulty in getting him properly secured. We learned that a large prisoner, if he is persistent enough, may take flight through a comparatively small hole, and we were therefore unremitting in our watchfulness until the captive was landed securely within the walls of the ancient fortress at the Battery.
And that is how the octopus came to the Aquarium.
IN NOVEMBER
BY EDITH WYATT
THEY had pitched camp in the shelter of a great buff-colored dune, with two up-turned canoes, and a small tent with a flap staked over it.
Lake Michigan, all green and mist-blown, banded the whole north horizon, to break along the curving beach in little hoary crowns of foam and bubbles. Southwest, southeast, and south, the broad, full contours of the dunes purled far away, beneath the gray and purple sky of the late autumn. They were grown with red-oak and yellow poplar-brush toward the west. Toward the southeast and south their long pure curves, low-swooping like a swallow’s flight, ran nude and pale, in shadows exquisitely changing in the rising afternoon.
Beside a smoky fire, between the tent and the lake, a sunburned young woman with roughly blown hair, in corduroy skirt and a boy’s overcoat, dark and shabby, now hid her eyes from the smoke, in the crook of her arm, and now rubbed vaseline on a stiff shoe in her lap.
These occupations so closely engaged her attention that she did not at first observe, across the beach, the approach of a little sandy woman between fifty and sixty, in a short walking-skirt and a felt walking-hat tied down with a veil. Her shoes looked damp. She glanced rather shyly, but with a sort of liking and friendliness, at the tent and the fire.
'Come and dry your shoes,' said the girl hospitably, lifting her eyes. She was a rather pretty blonde girl, with a good-humored, quiet expression.
'Are you folks camping out here?' said the visitor, still looking with an air of satisfaction and pleasure at the camp. 'You’re from Chicago, relatives to Mrs. Horick in South Laketown, ain’t you? So I heard. I’ve sewed some for her. Oh, I just wisht I was you. Few cares enough for camping to do it this time of year. Your folks come here to fish?'
'No,' said the girl quietly. 'One of my cousins was taken sick this fall, and told to live outdoors. So he decided to come out here and camp with his wife and little boy and me. For a while.'
'You have a nice place for it.'
'My cousins have gone to the station on some errands,' said the girl reflectively, polishing her shoe. She could not very well say to her relative’s dressmaker, that the camp had feared the visit of Mrs. Horick on that very afternoon.
Mrs. Horick was a pretty, competent, hard-edged young woman, who enjoyed such things in life as tight face-veils, high traps, and docked horses. The adult campers had drawn lots to select her victim for the afternoon. The lot had fallen to Jim Paine. But Jim took so unbridled a pleasure in displeasing Mrs. Horick that it was decided such a fate would be too cruel to her. The lots were drawn again. This time the lot fell to Alice Paine. But Mrs. Horick depressed Alice, sometimes for several hours after her departure. The lots were drawn again. This time the lot fell to Elsie Norris. With whoops, it was determined Elsie must remain. She would not care a fig what Mrs. Horick said or thought, would be entirely amiable with her, and, besides, had no shoes to walk to the station in. One pair was wet. The other was too stiff to put on. After dressing Elsie in the most handsome garments the camp afforded, the others had left her, early in the afternoon, with Shep, Rabbie’s collie, wandering around within call, and occasionally barking at imaginary wolves in the brush.
'Perhaps you met my cousins on your way,' said Elsie.
'No. I didn’t come from that direction. I came from Gary. It ain’t much of a place to live. But I got a real good airy room, with a back-porch of my own, in a carpenter’s family there. Miss Brackett’s my name. I’m about the only dressmaker in the place, so’s I get plenty of custom, more 'n all that I can do; and well-paid, too, you can say in a way,' she added with a sigh; 'and in a way, not; because I hate sewing. But then I walk a good deal around here. There’s some fine walks through the oaks and in the dunes; just as fine as any one could wish,' she said with a look of content. 'It makes me just about homesick to see your camp. I was camping myself six years ago.'
'Were you? Here?'
'No,' said Miss Brackett, with a little hesitation. In response to Elsie’s invitation, she had seated herself on a log, near the fire. There was evidently something very stirring in their little camp to her. For a moment she even looked as if she were going to cry. 'It was on the plains,' she said finally, with a certain pride. 'A long wagon-trip, a whole year long.'
'How fine!'
'Yes,' said Miss Brackett, looking at the dunes and the surging lake. 'It was, as you might say, a great experience. You hardly would believe me, but before that time, why, I hardly knew there was such a place as outdoors; not till I was forty-six years old; and that’s a fact.'
Elsie glanced up at her inquiringly. She had heard of persons who acquired Spanish at ninety, or who experienced a passionate personal infatuation for the first time at sixty, but never of an adult creature, devoted to an indoor existence, who suddenly felt in middle age a real response to the great inarticulate voices of the earth.
'Up to then, I lived on the West Side, in Chicago, with my married sister. My father left the place to her and to me. Most of the rest of the property went to my young half-brother Kip. But when Nettie’s children were nearly grown, it seemed as though there wasn’t any room left in the house for me; and yet they needed me, you see, to sew for them, right straight along. I used to sew, sew, sew till midnight and past, often, tucking on the girls' summer dresses, especially that last spring when I was at home; and I began to cough then and get so dreadful tired. That winter Nettie thought each of the girls ought to have their own room. It was no more than right, either. Nettie and me, we each had our own room when we was young girls. So I used to sleep just on two chairs with quilts in the back parlor, and couldn’t seem to rest very good, and, besides, had to get up and get dressed and the room fixed, real early, so Will could come there and read his morning paper. Well, I used to keep all my things in shoe-boxes, up in the attic, so they’d be out of the way. They used to laugh, and laugh, about those boxes; and one night we was all sitting on the steps, and they were laughing, and my youngest niece, Baby, she got real mad. She 's so warm-hearted and she never wanted to take my room, and only did because it provoked Nettie so, for her not to. Babe turned real white, and she said all of a sudden, "The reason why Aunt Min hasn’t anything but shoe-boxes to keep her things in is just because we’ve turned her out of everything," she said. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves." And she jumped up and ran into the house.
'That night my brother Kip happened to be there. He’d been West ever since he was fifteen. He’s a lot younger than Nettie and me—only twenty-five, then. We thought Kip was an awful wild, queer sort of fellow, then; we didn’t know him at all. I felt just like the rest. He’d run through all that was left him long ago; and he’d married an actress and was separated from her. He was a sort of a Socialist too, and even had tramped some. But he seemed to be real kind in some ways. When Babe said that, he looked at me quite hard. When he went home he says to me, "You look sick, Min," he says, and he took hold of my hand. "You’ve got fever. Why don’t you see a doctor?"
'Well, I don’t know what got into me. After they was all gone that night, I just broke down, and cried and cried. I did feel dreadful sick and feverish, and I hadn’t no money of my own to see a doctor, and felt just all gone really. I managed to get up and fix the room before any of them come down. But then I had to lie on the sofa, and couldn’t get to breakfast. And after breakfast—would you believe it?—a doctor come. Kip sent him, himself. But he frightened Nettie to death. I felt dreadfully sorry for her.'
'He told your sister how ill you were,' said Elsie gravely.
'Oh, yes. But it wasn’t so much that, as she was so afraid some of the children might catch my trouble. She was all right though as soon as they got me to the hospital, though she was provoked too, because it took so much of her time to come there to see me. She come twice before I went away. The doctor said that going away was my only chance. For all that I was up and around, he thought I couldn’t live a year.'
Neither of them spoke for a moment, looking away at the dunes.
'Then—what do you think—Kip had an intimate friend, quite a rich young man, Will Bronson, who was sick the same way I was. That’s how Kip come to notice my sickness so. The doctors wanted him kept out of doors, and he and Kip was going on this wagon-trip. But his mother was nearly crazy worrying over it, and worrying the young man and crying all day and night. She thought Kip never could take care of him. Well, those boys wanted me to go off with them on the wagon-trip. They said I could cook for them, and it would relieve the mother. And it did. They took me to see her. And she thought if a person like me could go on a wagon-trip it couldn’t be so awful after all. Well, the short and the long of it was, we went to Fort Leavenworth, and the boys got a wagon and provisions and blankets and thick shoes and things for me, and they got two good mules from the government post, and we started off.'
Miss Brackett sat erect. A look of elation burned in her violet eyes.
Elsie drew a deep breath and laughed.
'Yes. I didn’t like the idea at first: all the rough clothes, and our being alone on the plains, and after a while going to be right in the desert—it seemed to me terrible. But it was the only thing there was for me to do. I just kep' my mouth shut tight through all that time. And then, I don’t know, more and more, oh, I just come to love it!'
After a moment Elsie said, 'And did you really have any hardships?'
'What do you call hardship? The rainy reason was bad. But I’ve been lots wetter longer at a time, through whole winters, when I’d lend my rubbers to the children. Sometimes it was terrible cold. But then we always had a good fire. I’ve been lots colder in the back parlor and on crowded street-car platforms, and lots and lots more uncomfortable. Once we got off the trail. Once we had a bad time about finding water. One night, after the mules was hobbled they jumped along so far, even hobbled, that we couldn’t get them for hours. Kip and Will Bronson was gone six hours in different directions; and I was afraid they was lost. But I’ve had more hardship, you might say, and not that I want to complain either, in one week on the West Side at home, than in a whole year of what they called roughing it. And for hard feelings, and real mean bad ways of acting, I’ve seen more of them over getting out one shirt-waist in a dressmaker’s shop, than in that whole time on the wagon-trip. Even though once we had a man in our camp that we heard afterwards was a criminal and fugitive from justice,' she added with a laugh.
'What sort of a man was he?'
'A very considerate, pleasant sort of man. He was a short, thick-set fellow from Missouri, with a hard sort of chin. He come riding up near the Baton Pass, and asked to stay the night and get supper and breakfast with us. Well, it so happened I had caught cold and wasn’t feeling extra. The boys was worried and sort of mad,—that was the worst trouble we had,—because I would mend and cook just the same. The boys cooked terrible, and it seemed as though I couldn’t have no peace of mind, unless I did it. It made me feel so as though I was no use to them and not paying my share by what I did, you know. Well, this man from Missouri was a fine cook. He stayed with us three days, and by the time he went I was all right again. He was real helpful. They never got him. When we come to Trinidad, we was good and surprised to find he was a cattle thief that shot a sheriff that tried to arrest him.'
The lake was paler now. White clouds plumed on the horizon, and an evening glow, green and faintly flushing, was reflected delicately from the west. The dunes were browner and darker. The visitor sat thinking, evidently, of her long, free wandering days. Elsie, putting on her shoes, sat thinking of her wayfaring companion’s mean and hateful life in the very midst of what is called civilization and respectability; of her struggle for existence—a struggle in which she had been all but killed by the greedinesses around her; a struggle just as sharp as any of the nail-and-claw-depredations commonly attributed exclusively to wilder-nesses. They watched the sky change, in an unspoken friendliness.
'And now, you are much better?' said Elsie quietly.
'Yes. Now I’m well, thank God! And the Bronson boy as sound as a bell. That was the most lucky illness you can imagine for me. I couldn’t go back after that to the way I lived before. I always would live different—more outdoors, and just looking after myself better. Since that time, I’ve been lots more use to myself and everybody else. After we got to California, I sewed here and there for the people where we boarded first, and they liked my sewing so much, and I made so much money, that when Kip got a job to Gary, engineering for the electric plant, and I come too, to keep house for him, I put up a sign and gradually I’d worked up a good trade, before he was married. Why I’m going to be able to send Babe to Vassar, and plenty for me to take a trip west, too, next summer. Kip married such a nice girl.' She rose. 'I’ve talked you to death. But when you spoke about your cousin, it brought everything right out of my lips some way. I hope he’s not so very sick.'
'No. He will be well again. He has a splendid constitution.'
Miss Brackett shook hands with her. 'I wish you would come in for a minute and see me, if you ever have time some day when you’re in Gary.'
'I will.'
'Good-night.'
'Good-night.'
As her visitor disappeared over the rounded ridge of the dune, Elsie heard the home-coming voices of the campers. They had brought peanut-taffy to her, and they praised her none the less highly for her intended sacrifice to the Moloch of Mrs. Horick and the dullness of the world that she had not needed to make this sacrifice.
For some reason, she could not have explained to them about her chance guest. But she was still thinking of her, as she walked from the shore a little later to gather firewood for supper. The sun dropped long-ribbed level beams over the russet oak-brush and buff shadows of the dunes. Crimson rifts broke in the amber ether of the west. Rich, rich, soft, and deep, the fragrance of some far autumnal bonfire breathed in the cool air.
'Where are the songs of spring? oh, where are they? Mourn not for them, thou hast thy music, too,' rang silently in the girl’s fancy as she stood looking around her. And she wondered that she never till that day had realized how deeply wild creation is the birthright of every creature, not only for the power of tooth and fang, the strength of the marauder, but for the vitality of speed and sensitiveness, ground-squirrel, deer, and cricket; and how Nature’s most profound magnificence might sing, perhaps, not in her thrilling melody to April pulses, but in her proud cadence to November hearts.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND INTERPRETATIVE NOTES
THE LIE
MARY ANTIN, ever since The Promised Land first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, has come to mark the highest standard of literary excellence and political idealism possible for the best and most gifted of our foreigners to attain. Born in Russia, educated in Boston and New York, her influence has been widely exerted by her books and by her public addresses.
One of the chief points of interest in Mary Antin’s story lies in the conflict of ideas about truth. David had learned that in America a good patriotic citizen should learn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The demand for this strictness, he came to learn, was more particularly severe when assertions were recorded in writing on public documents. The little boy understood equally well that the training which his father had received in Russia made it seem right in certain cases to swear falsely and deceive the government. David therefore saw the tragical significance of his father’s false record on the American public school document. In David’s conception Mr. Rudinsky had done no wrong in telling the lie; yet that lie nevertheless stood out as a bold contrast to George Washington’s idea of truth. How could the little boy be loyal to both ideas, when the ideas were diametrically opposed to each other?
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. What are some of the differences suggested between life for the Jewish person in Russia and in America?
2. How does the author indicate her own feelings in regard to the problems that confront David and his father?
3. What does citizenship mean to Mr. Rudinsky? What are some of the more concrete forms by which he makes his ideas of freedom evident? Does his conception of Americanism coincide with that of the average American?
4. Has the literalness of David’s interpretation of "America" any real connection with the time of the story? Was it necessary to give so much general detail before the question of David’s age came up?
5. Why is Bennie introduced into the story? Do you find any other characters contributing to the humor or acting as foils?
6. How does the author reveal Miss Ralston’s competence to reconcile the two ideals of truth?
Student’s Comment on 'The Lie'
To me the chief interest in The Lie centres in the portrayal of character. Naturally I was most interested in David, and I found myself contrasting David’s habitually serious devotion to his studies with my own rather fitful habits of attack. The contrast was not comforting. Little Bennie I liked, too. Indeed, I think that for everyday living, I should find him the more agreeable companion of the two. He bubbles over so easily and charms us with his frankness and unconscious humor. Mr. Rudinsky’s ambition for David is splendid—so splendid that we can pretty readily excuse the lie he told about David’s age. I was not so much interested in Mrs. Rudinsky, but I nevertheless felt that if I were grading her on her proficiency in motherhood, I’d have to give her an A-,—or at least a B+. And Miss Ralston was wonderful. Wouldn’t it be splendid if every teacher could have such a sympathetic understanding of children’s hearts!
The second item that interested me was the patriotic note. In these war days everything even remotely connected with the patriotic ideal stirs us. I was proud that I could think of America as the land where my fathers had freely died in order that I might live in freedom. And I rather guiltily questioned whether I have been showing by my own service any real appreciation of the sacrifice which these fathers had made. And I felt a bit ashamed when I thought that David’s admiration for George Washington somehow seemed loftier and more deeply personal than my own had been.
Another characteristic struck me: Miss Antin portrayed her separate scenes with such graphic power. I am sure that I shall always remember the whimsical figure of David in the George Washington coat that was so much too big for the tiny figure. But I was almost afraid to laugh for fear of hurting David’s feelings, for David somehow seemed so very near. This touch of reality is equally strong in the passage which describes Mrs. Rudinsky and her hasty toilet, and her hands on which the scrubbing brush and paring knife had left their unmistakable marks.
I, of course, find that I was interested in the plot. Indeed, I read stories principally for the fun of seeing how the events shape themselves at the close. It doesn’t matter here that we are not told exactly what happened in that conversation between Miss Ralston and David. We know that the trouble was all smoothed out. Personally, I feel quite sure that David finally took part in that school entertainment.
BLUE REEFERS
ELIZABETH ASHE is the pen name of Georgiana Pentlarge, a young and promising story-writer, living in Boston.
A reefer properly belongs in the category useful. Even in its second or third season of usefulness, it retains certain warm and comforting qualities. How its sphere of endeavor may be extended to include a divine mission of poetic justice, Miss Ashe unfolds in a delightfully humorous experience of two little girls—one very pretty and habitually urbane, the other very homely and rather crude. With reefers smothering all glories of Persian lawn and fine silk slips, we have two little girls arrived at the height of ecstatic self-forgetfulness in the excitement of giving a recitation for the Christmas entertainment.
Complete satisfaction, too, is the reader’s. What a delightful chuckle he gives over Aunt Emma’s chagrin at discovering that, in the matter of little girls, golden hair and pink cheeks, or freckles and a 'jaw,' make very little difference! Yet his chuckle, after all, is only an echo from an adult world, a world suggested to Martha by the vague whisperings of Father and Mother after she has gone to bed. Far more real is the world Miss Ashe has created, where Miss Miriam’s black dress and gold cross present a charming but insoluble mystery; where one is forced, however regretfully, to reconcile cotton-batting with a Sunday-School Christmas tree, and where 'it is so nice to be in things.'
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. Comment on the author’s use of detail. Does it create a real atmosphere?
2. Is the author successful in her interpretation of the mind of the small girl? Is the author’s own personality ever intruded? How is she able to secure the larger view of the events that take place?
3. Is the climax made more or less effective by the children’s unconsciousness of their act? Would you have preferred a more startling dénouement?
4. Why is Luella sketched so lightly? Is the contrast only between the two little girls?
5. How does Miss Miriam contribute to the interest in the story?
6. Comment on the skillful ending of the story.
THE DEBT
KATHLEEN CARMAN (Mrs. L. N. Dodge), a writer of interesting short stories, lives in Evanston, Illinois. The Debt is her first contribution to The Atlantic.
Certain of the old Flemish painters present a canvas which seems to suggest that a peaceful meadow-land, a winding river, or a distant mountain-slope, exists only as a background for the figure in which they are interested. The relative importance is indicated by the proportions that make the figure loom large and masterful within the scene. Miss Carman, too, has cleared her canvas for the presentation of her figure; but her heroine is very small, very insignificant, in the presence of greater realities of expansive sea, cloud-fancies, or the rising moon. The interest of the story centres in the relation between Nature—more exactly God in Nature—and patient, plodding Sister Anne.
Nothing else matters. The problem itself is clear to Sister Anne; only the solution is difficult. To one whose life has seen all the unloveliness of heavy manual labor, there exists a pressing necessity to pay for the joy of living that is in her: a strange, absorbing joy in the beauty that God has created. Praise and prayer are not her instruments. A loving attendance at chapel and early matins cannot translate her feelings. Love and worship must be transmuted into the thing she knows—service.
The time comes. Simply, consciously, unquestioning, she risks her life to return another’s to God—a small payment for what He has given her. The problem is between them. Her devout companions may admire, the wealthy landowner wonder; nothing can be given to this 'poor, lonely, ignorant, toil-worn being, who in her starved existence had found more joy than she could make return for.'
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. The reader will find it interesting to contrast the ways in which Sister Anne and The Princess, in Miss Donnell’s story of The Princess of Make-Believe, reconcile themselves to the drudgery of dish-washing and similar tasks of kitchen routine.
2. What various manifestations of nature especially impressed Sister Anne? What appeal did these make to her companions?
3. Do you regard the author’s prolonged analytical method of characterization—as employed in the first part of the story—as the most effective means of bringing the reader into an understanding of the deeper personality of Sister Anne?
4. What special detail in this analysis most strongly impresses you?
5. What other method might have been adopted?
6. Characterize fully the spirit and the motive which impel Sister Anne’s final deed of sacrifice. What impresses you as the finest element in her act?
7. Comment upon the author’s way of ending the story.
SETH MILES AND THE SACRED FIRE
Cornelia A. P. Comer, accomplished critic, essayist, and writer of short stories, was educated at Vassar, and afterwards engaged in journalistic work in the Middle West and California. She now lives in Seattle.
There are really three stories in one: Cynthia’s and Dick’s we put together from suggestions; that of Seth Miles we know from his own detailed narrative; Richard’s remains for our forming. All the details are woven into a tale of one day. A day hot and sultry in itself is made to coincide with the grumblings and self-pitying of a pampered son; both day and character are cleared without the arrival of the threatened storm, and duty is made as splendid and beautiful as the sun emerging from a darkened sky. A dilettante, conceiving in his cultured self an appropriate offering from Mammon to the Muses, learns that even the heir of millions has work to do. The place and the teacher emphasize the greatness of the lesson. There is little doubt in the reader’s mind that Seth Miles’s sacrifice has been worth while. To him comes a double reward: the realization that Cynthia and Dick have lived lives worth his self-denial, and the satisfaction that to their son, through his own wise teachings, has come the ability to 'sense things.'
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. Comment upon the advantages secured by opening the story with direct quotations.
2. What light do these quotations throw upon the character of Richard’s father?
3. Note how quickly the transfer is made from the office of Mr. Bonniwell, Senior, to Seth Miles’s farm house. Such compression is necessary in a short story.
4. How do you explain Richard’s first attitude toward his teaching and toward all his surroundings at Garibaldi?
5. What was the first surprise Richard received concerning the character of Seth Miles?
6. What, according to Mr. Miles, was the marked change which the young teacher, 'Earnin' money to get through college,' effected?
7. Was Seth Miles’s sacrifice—the sacrifice he made when he gave up Cynthia—a natural one under the circumstances? Why? What helped to console him for his loss?
8. What was the second sacrifice, and in what spirit was it met?
9. Contrast Seth Miles’s spirit with the spirit of Sister Anne in Miss Carman’s The Debt.
BURIED TREASURE
Miss Mazo De La Roche has attained her most notable literary success in Buried Treasure. So apparent is this success, that a moving-picture company has recently asked the privilege of producing this story.
One suspects that Mrs. Mortimer Pegg never was a little girl; one is surprised to learn that Mr. Mortimer Pegg was, in a mysterious long ago, 'just so high'; that Mrs. Handsomebody issued from some unnamable monstrosity a fullfledged, much-starched governess, is beyond doubt. If not, how could they fail to enter with zest into the midnight treasure-hunt? What a wonderful scene it is: a burly old pirate in leather jerkin, breeches, and top-boots, not to mention a gleaming cutlass, surrounded by an Angel, a Seraph, and 'just John,' with as bloodthirsty appointments, all intent on the treasure-trove mysteriously located in Mrs. Handsomebody’s back yard. And then come the Grown-Ups! Poor Mr. Pegg must return to the disguise of an archæologist and the realms of respectable age.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. Divide the story into scenes for a motion-picture production. What would be the most regrettable loss in such a representation?
2. What do the names of the characters contribute to the charm of the story? Are they any help to your interpretation of the characters?
3. Comment on the characterization of Mary Ellen. Is she a type? Are there any other characters that you recognize as types? Do the presence of these detract from the real interest of the story?
4. Discuss the author’s power of word-selection and striking comparisons. What does this power add to her style?
THE PRINCESS OF MAKE-BELIEVE
Annie Hamilton Donnell was born in Maine, where much of her life has been spent. She has, however, lived in the Middle West, and her present home is in Framingham, Massachusetts. She has been a frequent contributor to many of our best periodicals.
It is the charm of perfect understanding that lifts Annie Hamilton Donnell’s story, out of the many, into that enchanting region inhabited by such bewildering creatures as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Anne of the famed Green Gables. To the author must be attributed that same responsive gift that makes the Prince really a Prince. For the Princess there is no evil to her who will not see it; so there is no harsh stepmother or horrid witch—only a Queen who 'never enjoys herself on wash-days.' The author’s delightful touches of humor make an easy and comfortable medium from Make-Believe to a no less interesting world of Little Willow Twins and fishing pools.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. What is the most marked characteristic of the Princess?
2. What foils are introduced to bring this characteristic into bolder view?
3. In what particular items is the author’s sense of humor best displayed?
4. Where is the emotion of the Princess most intense?
5. Is this emotion suddenly or gradually destroyed?
6. What are the points of strongest contrast between the imagined Prince and the real little neighbor-boy?
7. Comment on the sudden ending of the story.
THE TWO APPLES
James Edward Dunning, journalist and publicist, is the author of many reviews, government reports, essays, and short stories. He has had a long and honorable connection with the Department of State at Washington.
What has happened before the sixteenth day, what ship it was, what its destination, who its crew, how they had been wrecked, we are not told; nor are we particularly concerned with the history of those preceding events. We are intent on one man living with half-mad intensity a whole life in a single day. It is not so much that he knows the pain of diminishing vitality, the scorchings of hunger and thirst, as it is the spiritual tortures he undergoes. Everything that treacherous Desire can mean, he feels. It is only an apple, but as he, in his hungered, famished state, gazes upon it, every sense is alive with an intense elemental desire. At the moment of severest trial, with the clearness of vision of those near death, he sees himself, knows his sin, feels the mercy of God. And as the day closes, he experiences the happiness of sacrifice. Beside him Zadoc sleeps, perhaps drifts off into the Unknown.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. If the author had wished to make a much longer story of this, what episode or episodes could he have greatly elaborated? Can you surmise why he did not do this, but preferred rather to develop the situation he had selected?
2. What artistic effect is created by the description of the Cape Cod farm? Analyze the sensory imagery.
3. Why does Zadoc command that the last apple be placed 'under the tin cup in the middle of the raft'?
4. What had previously been Jeems’s attitude toward the sea? Has his attitude now changed? Why, or why not?
5. From the standpoint of mere sense-impression, what is the most significant moment in the story?
6. What is the point of highest spiritual interest?
THE PURPLE STAR
Mrs. Rebecca Hooper Eastman, a magazine writer of distinction, lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, the late Dr. Hooper, was for many years president of the Brooklyn Institute.
The judgment of his peers proved fatal to the glory of Charley Starr. Miss Prawl, the sixth-grade teacher, learned, too, with surprise, that if one is a dutiful child who neither disobeys nor deceives, he thereby lessens his opportunity to achieve the heroic. The literalness of Theodora and her zealots destroys any romantic impulse to make reckless synonymous with brave. One is reminded that the youthful escapades which brighten the biographies of certain national heroes—always making notable exception of the Father of Our Country—would not have met the rigorous demands of Theodora’s approval. The conclusion is obvious: it is difficult to become a hero and at the same time retain all the virtues—particularly the much-desired charity. And who would be judge? Let the order of the Purple Star be abolished!
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. What is the author’s purpose in writing this story?
2. What are the chief points of interest, besides this well-defined purpose?
3. Are you satisfied with the outcome of the story? Could you suggest any other way of meeting the problem?
4. Do you find the characters real? Is Theodora typical?
5. Why is it necessary to make character and setting somewhat subordinate?
6. Do you like the introduction? What is the basis of its charm?
7. Do you find the author critical of other things outside the immediate purpose of the story?
RUGGS—R. O. T. C.
William A. Ganoe, now stationed at West Point, is a captain in the Regular Army. When Ruggs—R. O. T. C. was printed in the Atlantic, it was immediately tried out in the class-room, where it won the instant favor of high-school pupils. It was the first story to be issued in the series of Atlantic Readings.
Amusing situations, with lively dialogue a-plenty, in this training-camp story of Mr. Ganoe, are the conveyances for a splendid lesson in pluck. Ruggs, the successful bank-manager, knew that only the best in the individual is worthy of recognition when it comes to government service. He meant to give that best. The trial came. Despite the confusion and the jeers, Ruggs came through; brains and thorough-going effort counted. To Ruggs it meant a first lieutenancy for his pluck, something to tell Alice, and a ride in a blanket for the glorious 'sell' he had practised on his jeering comrades. Underneath the fun and the hazing, there is, on all sides, sincere appreciation of merit.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. What purpose does the opening dream serve, besides that of arousing immediate interest?
2. Besides his ability for quick decision, what is the outstanding feature of Ruggs’s character?
3. How is the character of the Meter drawn? Is there any advantage in not naming him?
4. Are you prepared for the Meter’s decision in regard to the Duke? Is the latter introduced into the story for any purpose other than to amuse?
5. What are the author’s chief means of keeping suspense?
6. What ends do Squirmy’s nightly exercises serve?
7. Would it have added to the interest of the study to have Alice more fully characterized? Why is she introduced?
THE WAY OF LIFE
LUCY HUFFAKER is a short-story writer of distinction, who has recently been devoting her principal interest to the drama. She is connected with the Washington Square players in New York City.
In the short space of a May evening, Emmeline Black, mother of eight children, a good wife for a farmer, careful and industrious, lives through her girlhood aspirations and the complete shattering of her dreams. Finally, there comes to her the greater tragedy of the realization that, in spite of what she can do, her daughter faces the same career of fantasy and disillusionment. For the first time in twenty-one years, Jake Black finds his wife different, almost a bit untractable. Yet he can find no solution for the problem. 'Em' has been a good wife, their marriage has been successful, his daughter’s possible engagement augurs well for the future; but 'Em' is worried about something. It is the daughter herself who sets their small world aright. Her gratitude for the dreams her mother has given her brings to Emmeline the realization of the value of inspiration where accomplishment proves impossible. The years of hard work before her, and the prospect of a similar life for her daughter, grow insignificant before the new consciousness that dreams do last.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. Comment on the general atmosphere produced by the opening paragraphs.
2. What descriptive details contribute particularly to the realism of the scene?
3. How is this realism more fully brought out in the conversation between the wife and husband?
4. What feelings prompted the lie which Mrs. Black told? What can be said in extenuation of this lapse?
5. What contrasts were prominent in her mind?
6. What in Victoria’s character, makes the strongest appeal?
7. Do we feel that Victoria is more likely than her mother to keep the youthful dreams and visions?
8. What is Mrs. Black’s greatest consolation?
9. Comment on the author’s way of ending her story.
A YEAR IN A COAL MINE
JOSEPH HUSBAND has, since his graduation from Harvard in 1907, been engaged in industrial pursuits. He has, however, found time to contribute frequently to The Atlantic Monthly. At present Mr. Husband is an ensign in the United States Navy. The first account of his naval experience is published in the May (1918) Atlantic.
For vividness of sense-suggestion—color, sound, smell, feeling—Joseph Husband’s smooth-flowing narration of a year’s experience in a soft-coal mine is worthy of study. The blackness which is 'absence of light rather than darkness,' the submerging silence, the seeping gas-vapors, the nervous consciousness of lurking danger—all these give indisputable atmosphere. What grim tragedy, awful in its heavy brutality, might not here be grimly enacted! Instead, there is work—the grimy, sweating work of the underground; hard muscles, and senses not too alive to material forces. An occasional superstition gives life to the blackness—a strange white phantom that dazzles the sight and blinds the understanding with unreasoning fear. But most vivid of all is the blackness and the work.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. How does the author’s preface add to the interest in his narrative? Are your expectations of his added power borne out?
2. Do you find Mr. Husband more able in his descriptions of large scenes, masses of buildings, groups of people,—or in the individualizing of the single person or thing?
3. Is the setting for the work, or the work itself, the chief purpose of the narrative? Which do you find the more interesting?
4. Can you explain the author’s feelings of mortification as he first enters upon his duties?
5. What are some of the elements that make for the vividness of the scenes?
6. Why is the occasional mention of color so effective?
7. Contrast the mental occupations during a period of temporary leisure in a coal mine with a similar rest hour in the upper world?
8. From reading this narrative, can you offer any reasons why the ancient peoples believed mines to be inhabited by a race of gnomes?
WOMAN’S SPHERE
S. H. Kemper’s short stories reveal a genuinely sympathetic understanding of child-life. Mr. Kemper’s present home is in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The plot itself is slight: the presentation of a ball—a worsted ball—as a birthday present to a boy of nine! The comic element immediately suggests itself; Wilbur discovers that it may come very near tragedy—not for him, but for Aunt Susan. To be so inconceivably old that one cannot understand what a ball of gay worsted would mean to a boy who had already practised imaginary curves with a magnificent white sphere bearing the proud blue label of the American League! All Wilbur’s chivalric nature is called out to keep his great aunt from knowing how great is her misunderstanding, and how keen his aching pity that age could be so terrible.
Is there, perhaps, a suggestion here of refined propaganda?—Education for women—higher, broader, what you will?
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. Contrast Aunt Susan with Wilbur’s grandmother.
2. Mention certain significant items that contribute to the realism of the various situations.
3. Comment on the way in which Wilbur’s fancy works, as he views the ball in anticipation.
4. What was there in Aunt Susan’s conversation that reveals her lack of understanding of boy nature?
5. Is there any element of surprise in the way Wilbur takes his disappointment? Comment fully upon his varied emotions.
6. What is the marked contrast between Aunt Susan and Wilbur’s father?
7. Which paragraph is most interesting from the point of view of setting? Why?
8. Comment on the aptness of the title.
BABANCHIK
CHRISTINA KRYSTO lived the first nine years of her life, from 1887 to 1896, in Russia. She then came with her father’s family to America, settling on a ranch. Her vocation is ranch-work; her avocation is writing. Miss Krysto’s The Mother of Stasya is published in the June (1918) Atlantic.
An Armenian, a Revolutionist, a voluntary exile, desiring in his old age nothing so much as the privilege of serving Russia, whose government, institutions, and rulers he had fought all his seventy years—such is Babanchik. Russia had driven his twenty-year-old daughter into an exile of hard labor, had imprisoned his son for the best ten years of his life; and Babanchik died because his strength was too weak to carry him back to serve her. Shall you call it patriotism in a man who cursed his native land with a hymn of everlasting hate? racial instinct in one whose Armenian birth made him an object of official suspicion? Here there could be no overpowering conviction that his country’s civilization must be protected against the dreaded Kultur. Yet the desire comes—not only his own, but the command of his imprisoned son, that he serve Russia.
There are other beautiful things in Christina Krysto’s story, not the least of which are the suggestive bits of description of the life in the Georgian village. Yet Babanchik, of the caressing name, product of that strange country whose people grow more incomprehensible as the Great War progresses, interesting as he is, directing the summer play in the Caucasian Mountains, is a thousand times more wonderful when swayed by the unnamed power that returns him dead to Russia.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. What are the characteristics in Babanchik that make him a favorite with the children?
2. Contrast the Babanchik who played with the children with the Babanchik who talked with the father.
3. What were Babanchik’s most serious interests?
4. What circumstances of his birth hampered his influence with the Russian government?
5. How was his ambition to become a member of the city Duma crushed?
6. In spite of government intervention, what were some of the beneficial influences which Babanchik found that he could exert?
7. What was there in the government of Russia that was particularly distasteful to a man of Babanchik’s nature?
8. What strong traits of Babanchik are brought out in that long furious fight for his children in the Russian prison?
9. What effect did the war have upon Babanchik’s view of Russia?
10. What hastened the old man’s desire to return?
11. Comment upon the author’s artistic close.
ROSITA
ELLEN MACKUBIN was, several years ago, a frequent contributor to the Atlantic. Nearly all her stories are tinged with the military spirit with which she was thoroughly familiar.
The cause of the deed is never revealed to the garrison; its consequences can only be surmised. Indeed the true standing of the affair as tragedy is only guessed. The instigator of the quarrel between Major Prior and Jerry Breton, the perpetrator, and the victim of the tragedy unite in the person of one christianized just enough to suffer for the savage instincts she had never learned to control. We see her just once, Rosita, the beautiful, the impulsive, the passionate; the next time she is dead. It is the feeling of repressed power that makes Ellen Mackubin’s story grip the attention. In a few short pages, three—possibly four—characters are made to live, and a tragedy wrecks two lives.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. Discuss which of the common elements of story—setting, plot, character, theme, or style—is here most prominent.
2. Discuss the way in which the separate characters are introduced and the complication arranged.
3. How can Jerry’s treatment of the commanding officer on the day of the dress parade be condoned?
4. How does the reader feel regarding Rosita’s vague declaration that she will rid Jerry of Prior’s unfairness?
5. On the night of the shooting, what motive prompted Jerry to fling the pistol far over the edge of the bluff?
6. Describe the effects which the tragedy produced upon the garrison.
7. What were Jerry’s feelings during the days immediately succeeding the tragedy?
8. How does the reader decide the question as to who is the really guilty person?
PERJURED
Edith Ronald Mirrielees is a member of the English Department of Leland Stanford Junior University.
It was a useless lie. Robbins knew that, as soon as he had spoken it. But it stopped the boys' teasing. Once spoken, events followed in too rapid succession for him to do more than qualify his statement; the bald accusation remained. Repetition had done more than confirm the story in Sutro; it had benumbed Robbins’s own sense of exactness. His reputation for truth constantly confronted him; sometimes it made it easier for him, but increasingly often he saw the difficulty of reconciling the lie with himself. On the other hand, time and self-torture strengthened the conviction that truth must prevail and that no innocent man could suffer by the law. And so it proved. Robbins, the boy who had tried to save himself from momentary discomfiture, who had deliberately placed a man in direct accusation for murder, found himself, not a self-righteous person who by a last act of grace redeems the innocent and places himself on a martyr’s pedestal; instead, he found himself a perjured youth, no better than the truck-gardener Emerson in whom truth itself lost credence.
That a malignant fate had placed the name of the guilty man in the boy’s mouth, comes with no shock; the author has so carefully prepared our minds for that very verdict, that we are merely surprised that we could have forgotten the bits of telling evidence. The interest begins and ends with a boy of sixteen who in weakness was forsworn.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. Comment on the appropriateness of the direct opening. Is such a method more appropriate to one type of story than another?
2. Describe the steps by which the author prepares for, without explaining, his climax.
3. How does the author focus attention, not on the murderer and criminal, but on the individual problem of Robbins? Would you have preferred a more detailed explanation of the cause of the crime?
4. Why is Emerson introduced?
5. Is the enormity of the injury he is doing ever clear to Robbins?
6. What other stories are included, but left untold, in this one?
7. What, to you, is the most significant thing in the author’s handling of the narrative? Why would such a story not lend itself to scenic production?
WHAT MR. GREY SAID
Margaret Prescott Montague, living among the West Virginia mountains, has written many successful stories of the Hill people whom she knows so well.
To make of the little blind child of the coal-miner a compellingly human little soul, yet to touch him with a warmth and beauty of imagination so exquisite that it pains the heart; to do all this so deftly, so tenderly that one draws a quick breath of wonder—these are only bare suggestions of the power that created Margaret Prescott Montague’s What Mr. Grey Said.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. Contrast the richness of sense-perceptions of Stanislaus with his poverty of all things else.
2. Analyze the elements that make up the charm of Stanislaus. Aside from the pathetic, what is the strongest interest?
3. How does Miss Julia help to prolong the suspense?
4. Would the story have been as powerful if it were entirely tragic?
5. Would the story have gained if Stanislaus were presented in direct contrast to the other blind children? Why would a longer story have been weaker?
6. Does the dialect contribute to the charm of the story? What is the real function of dialect?
7. Does the ending seem a makeshift to avoid a difficulty? How has the author succeeded in making the ending not only possible but probable?
A SOLDIER OF THE LEGION
E. Morlae was an American who, in the early days of the Great War, enlisted in the French Army and became a Soldier of the Legion. Many of his war experiences are graphically told in his various articles in The Atlantic Monthly.
'We spent our time eating and sleeping, mildly distracted by an intermittent bombardment': these were the breathing spells; active work found analogy only in the regions below. Yet either adventure was told with equal calm. That is what impresses one in Sergeant Morlae’s narrative. It is so grimly calm, almost impersonal. There is no careless enthusiasm, excited hilarity, or mad vengeance—simply a job to be done. The enemy alive present a target; dead, a source of added comfort for one’s self, a souvenir for one’s brother, or, if need be, material for a parapet. One’s life before and after has nothing to do with the present. And this is even more terrible for what it leaves unsaid.
There is, however, no lack of vividness in A Soldier of the Legion. The matter-of-factness of the telling deceives us only for a time, until the intrusion of a crisp, 'Hell kissed us welcome'; or, more significant still, 'And we were counted: eight hundred and fifty-two in the entire regiment, out of three thousand two hundred who entered the attack on the 25th of September.'
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. Does the conversational tone of the narrative make it any the less vivid?
2. When is the author’s power of vivid portrayal most apparent?
3. What ideas do you get of the Legion’s views of the enemy? Contrast it with other war stories you have read. Could it be accounted for by the type of men who entered the Foreign Legion?
4. What in the author’s account suggests the general morale of the troops?
5. What does the grimness of the occasional bits of humor convey as to the mental state of the men? What do these occasional jokes gain by their very scarcity?
6. What new ideas of war come to you from Sergeant Morlae’s account?