Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me by William Allen White
page 48 of 206 (23%)
together. He heard me and paused. Then we walked toward one another
whistling and met. It was the Gilded Youth from the ship--the
Gilded Youth whose many millions had made him shimmer. He was not
shimmering there on the sloppy hillside. He was a field service
man, and we went back to his machine and sat on it and talked
music--music that seemed to be the only reality there in the midst
of death, and the spirit that was moving men in the moonlight to
forget death for something more real than death. And so it came
about that the crescendo of our talk ran thus:

And courage--that thing which the Germans thought was their special
gift from Heaven, bred of military discipline, rising out of German
kultur--we know now is the commonest heritage of men. It is the
divine fire burning in the souls of us that proves the case for
democracy. For at base and underneath we are all equals. In crises
the rich man, the poor man, the thief, the harlot, the preacher,
the teacher, the labourer, the ignorant, the wise, all go to death
for something that defies death, something immortal in the human
heart. Those truck-drivers, those mule whackers, those common
soldiers, that doctor, these college men on the ambulances are
brothers tonight in the democracy of courage. Upon that democracy
is the hope of the race, for it bespeaks a wider and deeper kinship
of men.

So then we knew that under the gilding of the Gilded Youth was
fine gold. He was called for a wounded man. As he cranked up his
car he asked rather too casually, "Have you seen our friend from
the boat--the pretty nurse?" We started to answer; the stretcher
bearer called again and in an instant he went buzzing away and we
returned to the hospital.
DigitalOcean Referral Badge