C.,--there was a peaceful honor
which clung to him unsought.
During his first year of army life, he became the paragon of every poor
private and raw recruit struggling with the miseries of goose-step, with
whom he came even into momentary contact. For sometimes through a word
or act, sometimes through a flash of the eye, or a look about the mouth,
during the brief interchange of a military salute, these "backward ones"
saw that the progressive young officer looked on them, not as
men-machines, but as brothers, as important in the great schemes of the
nation and the world as he was himself; that he was proud to serve with
them, and would be prouder still to help them if he could.
It was an understanding which inspired many a tempted or newly joined
fellow to drill himself morally as his sergeant drilled him physically,
with a determination to become as fine a soldier and forward a man as
his paragon.
But only one American friend of Lieutenant Farrar's, who has let out the
secret to the writer, knows that the binding truth of human brotherhood
was first born into him when, on Katahdin's side, he helped to bury a
thieving half-Indian.
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