im; and her
eyes, shining with increasing brightness as she dwelt upon things
that meant fading sunlight: she fondling the playthings of his
infancy, keeping some of them to be folded away with her at last;
touching her bridal dress and speaking her reliance on her sons for
sons and daughters; at the close of the long trying day standing at
the foot of the staircase white with weariness and pain, but so
brave, so sweet, so unconquerable. He knew that she was not
sleeping now, that she was thinking of him, that she had borne
everything and would bear everything not only because it was due to
herself, but because it was due to him.

He turned out the lights and sat at a window opening upon the
night. The voices of the land came in to him, the voices of the
vanished life of its strong men.

He remembered the kind of day it was when he first saw through its
autumn trees the scattered buildings of his university. What
impressions it had made upon him as it awaited him there, gray with
stateliness, hoary with its honors, pervaded with the very breath
and spirit of his country. He recalled his meeting with his
professors, the choosing of his studies, the selection of a place
in which to live. Then had followed what had been the great
spectacle and experience of his life--the assembling of picked
young men, all eager like greyhounds at the slips to show what was
in them, of what stuff they were made, what strength and hardihood
and robust virtues, and gifts and grace for manly intercourse. He
had been caught up and swept off his feet by that influence.
Looking back as he did to that great plateau which was his home,
for the first time he had felt that he was not only a youth of an
American commonwealth, but a youth of his whole country. They
were all American youths there, as opposed to English youths and
German youths and Russian youths. There flamed up in him the
fierce passion, which he believed to be burning in them all, to
show his mettle--the mettle of his state, the mettle of his nation.
To him, newly come into this camp of young men, it lay around the
walls of the university like a white spiritual host, chosen youths
to be made into chosen men. And he remembered how little he then
knew that about this white host hung the red host of those
camp-followers, who beleaguer in outer darkness every army of men.

Then had followed warfare, double warfare: the ardent attack on
work and study; athletic play, good f