The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson by Stephen Coleridge
page 6 of 149 (04%)
page 6 of 149 (04%)
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language can say things in a few words that will find their way straight
into our hearts, Antony, and make us all better men. I will tell you a few of such simple sayings that are better than any more laboured writings. On the 30th of June, 1921, in the _Times_ In Memoriam column there was an entry:-- "To the undying memory of officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the 9th and 10th battalions of the K.O.Y.L.I.[1] who were killed in the attack on Fricourt in the first battle of the Somme"; and below it there were placed these splendid words:-- "Gentlemen, when the barrage lifts." In February of 1913 news reached England of the death, after reaching the South Pole, of four explorers, Captain Scott, their leader, among them. Shortly before the end, Captain Oates, a man of fortune who joined the expedition from pure love of adventure, knowing that his helplessness with frozen feet was retarding the desperate march of the others towards their ship, rose up and stumbled out of the tent into a raging blizzard, saying, "I dare say I shall be away some time." This was greatly said. His body was never found; but the rescue party who afterwards discovered the tent with the others dead in it, put up a cairn in the desolate waste of snow with this inscription:-- "Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L.E.G. Gates, |
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