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Page 27
Reflecting, he saw a sort of a humor in the point of view of
himself and his fellows during the late encounter. They had
taken themselves and the enemy very seriously and had imagined
that they were deciding the war. Individuals must have supposed
that they were cutting the letters of their names deep into
everlasting tablets of brass, or enshrining their reputations
forever in the hearts of their countrymen, while, as to fact,
the affair would appear in printed reports under a meek and
immaterial title. But he saw that it was good, else, he said, in
battle every one would surely run save forlorn hopes and their ilk.
He went rapidly on. He wished to come to the edge of the forest
that he might peer out.
As he hastened, there passed through his mind pictures of
stupendous conflicts. His accumulated thought upon such
subjects was used to form scenes. The noise was as the
voice of an eloquent being, describing.
Sometimes the brambles formed chains and tried to hold him back.
Trees, confronting him, stretched out their arms and forbade him
to pass. After its previous hostility this new resistance of the
forest filled him with a fine bitterness. It seemed that Nature
could not be quite ready to kill him.
But he obstinately took roundabout ways, and presently he was
where he could see long gray walls of vapor where lay battle
lines. The voices of cannon shook him. The musketry sounded
in long irregular surges that played havoc with his ears. He stood
regardant for a moment. His eyes had an awestruck expression.
He gawked in the direction of th fight.
Presently he proceeded again on his forward way. The battle
was like the grinding of an immense and terrible machine to him.
Its complexities and powers, its grim processes, fascinated him.
He must go close and see it produce corpses.
He came to a fence and clambered over it. On the far side, the
ground was littered with clothes and guns. A newspaper, folded up,
lay in the dirt. A dead soldier was stretched with his face hidden
in his arm. Farther off there was a group of four or five corpses
keeping mournful company. A hot sun had blazed upon this spot.
In this place the youth felt that he was an invader. This
forgotten part of the battle ground was owned by the dead men,
and he hurried, in the vague apprehension that one of the
swollen forms would rise and tell him to begone.
He came finally to a road from which he could see in the distance
dark and agitated bodies of troops, smoke-fringed. In the lane
was a blood-stained crowd streaming to the rear. The wounded men
were cursing, groaning, and wailing. In the air, always, was a
mighty swell of sound that it seemed could sway the earth. With
the courageous words of the artillery and the spiteful sentences
of the musketry mingled red cheers. And from this region of
noises came the steady current of the maimed.
One of the wounded men had a shoeful of blood. He hopped like a
schoolboy in a game. He was laughing hysterically.
One was swearing that he had been shot in the arm through the
commanding general's mismanagement of the army. One was marching
with an air imitative of some sublime drum major. Upon his
features was an unholy mixture of merriment and agony. As he
marched he sang a bit of doggerel in a high and quavering voice:
"Sing a song 'a vic'try,
A pocketful 'a bullets,
Five an' twenty dead men
Baked in a--pie."
Parts of the procession limped and staggered to this tune.
Another had the gray seal of death already upon his face.
His lips were curled in hard lines and his teeth were clinched.
His hands were bloody from where he had pressed them upon his wound.
He seemed to be awaiting the moment when he should pitch headlong.
He stalked like the specter of a soldier, his eyes burning with
the power of a stare into the unknown.
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