They
called to me as a boy, when wandering over the hills, I looked away to
them, and over them, into the mysterious blue, picturing my India and
my China, my England and my Russia in a geographical jumble that began
just beyond the horizon.
Then I was a prisoner in the dungeons of Youth and my mother was my
jailer. The day came when I was free, and forth I went full of hope,
twenty-three years old by the family Bible, with a strong, agile body
and a homely face. I went as a soldier. For months I saw what is
called the world; I had glimpses of cities; I slept beneath the palms;
I crossed a sea and touched the tropics. Marching beneath a blazing
sun, huddling from the storm in the scant shelter of the tent, my
spirits were always keyed to the highest by the thought that I was
seeing life and that these adventures were but a fore-taste of those to
come. But one day when we marched beneath the blazing sun, we met a
storm and found no shelter. We charged through a hail of steel. They
took me to the sea on a stretcher, and by and by they shipped me home.
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