Gleason

“ Gleason went up into the garrison with his own particular pack-mule; billeted himself on the infantry commanding officer—the major—and in a short time appeared freshly-shaved and in the neatest possible undress uniform, ready to call upon the few ladies at the post, and of course to make frequent reference to "my battalion," or "my command," down beyond the dusty, dismal corrals. The rest of us, having come out for business, had no uniforms, nothing but the rough field, scouting rig we wore on such duty, and every man's chin was bristling with a two-weeks'-old beard. ”

“ The doctor read it, and said a sharp something behind his teeth. Without another word he handed the note to his sister. And this is what she read:—
Dear Dr. Gleason:—
He isn't my property. I can't lose him, for I haven't him to lose. He took himself away from me years ago. If ever I'm to win him back, I must win him—not compel him. If he thinks he's found some one else—all the more reason why I can't come back now, until he knows whether he wants her or not. But if I came now, and he should want her— Really, Dr. Gleason, I don't want the same man to tell me twice to—go.
Helen D. ”

“ Every report had something additional to say of Ray's valor, and though he ground his teeth in rage at the thought of Ray's temporary exaltation, Gleason was philosopher enough to know that no man was long a hero in garrison life, and so took advantage of the excitement to go and besiege the ladies with congratulations. ”

“ She recollected her as she first saw her, a beautiful and blooming woman, and now there was bloom without beauty, and brightness without beauty, for the color on the cheek and the gleam of the eye, made one wish for pallor and dimness, as less painful and less prophetic.
“Yes, Miss Thusa,” resumed Mrs. Gleason, after a long pause, “if my child lives, I wish her guarded most carefully from all gloomy influences. I know that I must soon leave her, for I have an hereditary malady, whose symptoms have lately been much aggravated. ”

“ And Gleason looked very closely into the grizzled features of the commandant.
"Some letters for him had been sent with my mail—and a telegram. I inferred that he must be coming, and thought you might know. Rather a spirited young fellow he seems to be. I was quite startled at his notion of riding alone in search of the regiment. How soon does he start? I see his horse there yet."
"He spoke of going in a few moments, sir. You see we have been so much accustomed to this sort of thing in Arizona that there is nothing unusual in it to us. ”

“ Then, when Gleason refused, in the heat of passion, Pollard shot him.”
“But the carefully prepared letter from Barry proves premeditation.”
“That’s so. And, remember his threat to kill Gleason. Would he have said that, if he had really intended to kill him?”
“I think so. I’ve thought all along, that Pollard’s bravado was his hope of escape. He would argue that a man who made such a threat would not be suspected. And, quite as he calculated, everybody said, ‘oh, if he had meant to kill Gleason, he never would have advertised his intention.’ That was a bold stroke, but an efficacious one. ”

“ Gleason." Everybody thought that Loring was decidedly unsociable, and some went so far as to call him supercilious and haughty.
"Too damned big to mingle with men who fought all through the war while he was a schoolboy at the Point," said Gleason, who had never seen a skirmish.
This latter gentleman took it much amiss that Loring had won the shoulder-straps of a first lieutenant the day he first donned his uniform (many vacancies then existing in the Corps of Engineers) , while Gleason and others, with what he called war records, were still [Pg 83] second lieutenants. ”

“ Gleason was still weak, though growing stronger, and Henderson didn’t see that he was crazy with envy of a man who was safe and prosperous and ought to turn out rich when his newly planted coconut trees came into bearing. ”

“ As we motored in and out of Nieuport in the dark of the night, we passed hundreds of silent men trudging through the mud of the gutter. They were troops that had been relieved who were marching back for a rest. As soon as they came out of the zone where no sound can be made and no light shown, we saw here and there down the invisible ranks the sudden flare of a match, and then the glow in the cup of the hand, as the man prepared to cheer himself. ”

“ It is easy for the boys of Brittany to die, those sailors with a rifle, the stanch Fusiliers Marins, who, outnumbered, held fast at Melle and Dixmude, and for twelve months made Nieuport, the extreme end of the western battle- [Pg 242] line, a great rock. It is easy, because there is a glory in the eyes of boys. But the older man lives with second thoughts, with a subdued philosophy, a love of security. He is married, with a child or two; his garden is warm in the afternoon sun. He turns wistfully to the young, who are so sure, to cheer him. ”

“ He paused meaningly and smiled again. “Elice mine, we’re in grave danger, you and I. That worthy pair have designs upon our future. They are in the position of a certain class, famed in adage, who desire company. The dinner is only another illustration of the same point.”
Elice Gleason returned the smile, but quietly. She made no further comment, however, and the subject dropped.
In the hammock Armstrong swung back and forth in lazy well-being. Overhead the mother wren, a mere brown shadow, flitted in return over their heads. ”

“ Gleason, who of all things loved a sensation, faithfully promised to deliver and fully meant to, but the game at the sutler's developed into a big one that eventful night. Jackpots were the rule before the drums of the infantry hammered out first call for tattoo, and in the absorbing nature of his occupation he never thought of Nevins' charge except as something to be attended to later, [Pg 87] and not until guard-mount of another day, when his head was muddled with the potations of an all-night session and the befogging cocktails of the morning, did Mr. ”

“ Gleason, who from a distance was watching with a glass the movements of our unwilling sitter. The signal soon came, and these complicated and rather juvenile tactics proved so successful - 38 - that very soon Mrs. Plover did not so much as change position at the click of the shutter, and when driven away to rearrange the camera between exposures, came quickly back again. In a short time we had exposed all the plates that seemed necessary, and retired from the field conquerors, though leaving the foe in peaceful possession. ”

“ It came easier even than Gilleen had figured it would—such as it was—and it was about the last job Gilleen had thought of as a possibility. Things have a peculiar way of working themselves out sometimes, and, curiously enough, by means which, on the surface, are, more often than not, apparently trivial and inconsequent. Certainly, if Gilleen, on his way to the station that morning, had not run into Gleason, the yard-master, why then—but he did. ”

“ Who knows but Albert saw in his silent heart that the only thing to weld his [Pg 131] people together, honeycombed as they were, was the shedding of blood? Perhaps nothing short of a supreme sacrifice, amounting to a martyrdom, could restore a people so tangled in German intrigue, so netted into an ever-encroaching system of commerce, carrying with it a habit of thought and a mouthful of guttural phrases. Let no one underestimate that power of language. If the idiom has passed into one, it has brought with it molds of thought, leanings of sympathy. ”

“ At three of the tables sat officers of the Belgian regiments— [68] lieutenants, two commandants, one captain. At the fourth table, in the window, was dear little Doctor Neil McDonnell, beaming at the velocity and sensation of her advent.
"You come like a yellow peril," said he. "If you are not careful, you will make more wounded than you heal."
"Never," returned Mrs. Bracher, firmly; "it is always in control." ”

“ Mr Glaenzer delights in cynicism. His lyrics are tinged and also tarnished by this trait. Try as he may to climb to the subjective hights of lyricists, there is always some repelling incident to make him slip. For this reason he never effervesces nor thrills with emotional ecstasy. The coquette amuses him. There is always some regret or failing in his theme to dull the brilliance of the glittering peak.”
GLEASON, ARTHUR HUNTINGTON. Inside the British Isles. *$2 (2c) Century 942.08 17-14222
A series of papers on Great Britain in wartime, arranged in four groups: Labor; Women; Ireland ”

“ It would only subject his family to reprisal by the German military power. He belongs to the 46th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 5 Reserve Corps. He has a knack at homely details. He enters a deserted house where the pendulum of the clock still swings and ticks and sounds the hours. He believes himself under the direct protection and guidance of God. He sees it when a shell explodes, killing his comrades. He speaks of the beauty of the dead French officers, as he sees [183] them lying in a railway station. He is skeptical about the lies told against French and Belgians. ”

“ So it was the most gallant of all relief work that I have seen—this restoration of disfigured soldiers to their own proper appearance.
And the work of these hundreds of Americans at Neuilly was summed for me in the person of one dental surgeon, who sat a few feet from those forty masks and those six hundred photographs, working at a plaster-cast of a shattered jaw. He was very much American—rangy and loose-jointed, with a twang and a drawl, wondering why the blazes a writing person was bothering a man at work. ”

“ Bracher.
"The very first thing they will do—they will place a gun on top of the trench, and rake this whole town. They [82] can rake the road that leads to Furnes. It would cut off your retreat to Furnes."
That meant the only escape for the women would be through the back-yard, and over fields knee-deep in mud, where dead horses lie loosely buried in hummock graves.
"What do you think we had better do?" asked Hilda. "To leave now seems like shirking our job."
"There'll be no job for you, if the enemy come through to-night," returned the Commandant; "they'll do the job. ”

“ But this is the kindly humor of Brittany. The saucy sailor caps could not have looked strangely to German eyes, because a few weeks earlier those "Girls with the red pompon" had held the German army corps at Melle, and not even terror could have made them look other than terribly familiar. No. The officers had been faithfully trained to find militant peasants under arms, and to send back letters and reports of their discovery, which could later be used in official excuses for frightfulness. ”

“ As quickly as they could unload their men, and stuff them into the corridor, Hilda and the doctor and Woffington sped back down the line, and up to the thronged dressing-stations. Wounded men were not their only charge, nor their gravest. They took in a soldier sobbing from the shock of the ceaseless shell fire. The moaning and wasp-like buzz of the flying metal, then the earth-shaking thud of its impact, and the roar of its high explosive, had played upon nerves not elastic enough to absorb the strain, till the man became a whimpering child. ”

“ Bracher.
"The lot of us here, exchanging favorites, with war just outside our window. I tell you," repeated Hilda, "no one would believe it."
"They don't have to," retorted Mrs. Bracher, sharply. She had grown weary of telling folks at home how matters stood, and then having them say, "Fancy now, really?"
The methodical guns had pounded the humanity out of Pervyse, and, with the living, had gone music and art. There was nowhere in the wasted area for the tired soldiers to find relief from their monotony. War is a dreary thing. ”

“ He was blotted out by the "Hilda" car, as he tinkered with its intimacies. No man ever looked less like a Chevalier, than Smith, when discovered and conducted to the King. Any of the little naval boy officers standing around with their gold braid on the [160] purple cloth, looked gaudier than Smith. He looked more like a background, with his weather-worn khaki, and narrow, high-hitched shoulders, than like the center-piece in a public performance. ”

“ Then some quiet curé, or village storekeeper, or nun, took over the leadership. Wherever one of these strong souls has lived in the region of death, in that village he has saved life. When the weak and aged were wild with terror, and hunted to their death, he has spoken bravely and acted resolutely. The sudden rise to power of obscure persons throughout Northern France reminds an American of the life history of Ulysses Grant. So at Clermont, the Mayor took to his heels, but Edouard Jacquemet, then sixty-eight years old, and his wife, stayed through the bonfire of their village and their home. ”

“ But death is war's [117] best gift. War's other gifts are malicious—fever and plague, and the maiming of strength, and the fouling of beauty—shapely bodies tortured to strange forms, eager young faces torn away. Death is choicer than that, a release from the horror of life trampled like a filthy weed.
"Mons was a birthday party to this," said a Tommy to Hilda. "They're expecting too much of us. The whole thing is put on us to do, and it takes a lot of doing."
Dr. McDonnell and Woffington loaded the car with the severest of the cases, and returned to the white house of the Officer. ”

“ Remember, there is not the slightest room for honest question either as to the dreadful, the unspeakably hideous, outrages committed on the Belgians, or as to the fact that these outrages were methodically committed by the express command of the German Government in order to terrorize both the Belgians and among neutrals those men who are as cold and timid and selfish as our governmental leaders have shown themselves to be. Let any man who doubts read the statement of an American eye-witness of these fearful atrocities, Mr. Arthur H. Gleason, in the 'New York Tribune' of November 25, 1915. ”