but I
do believe it kills nobility. Individuality dies in it, and egotism
grows strong and specious. Why is it that in a polished life a man,
whilst becoming incapable of sinking to crime, almost always becomes
also incapable of rising to greatness? Why is it that misery, tumult,
privation, bloodshed, famine, beget, in such a life as this, such
countless things of heroism, of endurance, of self-sacrifice--things
mostly of demigods--in men who quarrel with the wolves for a wild-boar's
carcase, for a sheep's offal?

* * *

As for death--when it comes it comes. Every soldier carries it in his
wallet, and it may jump out on him any minute. I would rather die young
than old. Pardi! age is nothing else but death that is _conscious_.

* * *

It is misery that is glory--the misery that toils with bleeding feet
under burning suns without complaint; that lies half dead through the
long night with but one care, to keep the torn flag free from the
conqueror's touch; that bears the rain of blows in punishment rather
than break silence and buy release by betrayal of a comrade's trust;
that is beaten like the mule, and galled like the horse, and starved
like the camel, and housed like the dog, and yet does the thing which is
right, and the thing which is brave, despite all; that suffers, and
endures, and pours out his blood like water to the thirsty sands whose
thirst is never stilled, and goes up in the morning sun to the combat as
though death were the Paradise of the Arbico's dream, knowing the while
that no Paradise waits save the crash of the hoof through the throbbing
brain, or the roll of the gun-carriage over the writhing limb. _That_ is
glory. The misery that is heroism because France needs it, because a
soldier's honour wills it. _That_ is glory. It is to-day in the hospital
as it never is in the Cour des Princes where the glittering host of the
marshals gather!

* * *

Spare me the old world-worn, thread-bare formulas. Because the flax and
the colza blossom for use, and the garden flowers grow trained and
pruned, must there be no bud that opens for mere love of the sun, and
swings free in the wind in its fearless fair fashion? Believe me, it is
the lives which follow no previous rule that do the most good, and give
the most harvest.

* * *

"The first thing I saw of Cigarette was this: She was seven years old;
she had been beaten black a