ament by
Arthur Henderson--but I have never seen this one quoted anywhere; so I
am rather at a loss to explain its peculiar influence on me. Entirely
individual reactions to the printed word are always a little mysterious.
I know, for example, one usually enlightened and catholic critic who
stubbornly maintains that a very commonplace distich by Lord De Tabley
is the most magical moment in all English verse. But here is my
paragraph--or Susan's--for what it is worth:

"This Pomeranian prisoner was a blond boy-giant; pitifully shattered;
it was necessary to remove his left leg to the knee. The operation was
rapidly but skillfully performed. He was then placed on a pallet, close
beside the cot of a wounded German officer. After coming out of the
ether his fever mounted and he grew delirious. The German officer
commanded him to be silent. He might just as well have commanded the sun
to stand still, and he must, however muzzily, have known that. Yet he
was outraged by this unconscious act of insubordination. Thrice he
repeated his absurd command--then raised himself with a groan, leaned
across, and struck the delirious boy in the face with a weakly clenched
fist. It was not a heavy blow; the officer's strength did not equal his
intention. '_Idiot!_' I cried out; and thrust him back on his cot,
half-fainting from the pain of his futile effort at discipline. 'Idiot'
was, after all, the one appropriate word. It was constantly, I found,
the one appropriate word. The beast was a stupid beast."

THE LAST CHAPTER

I

PHIL FARMER and Jimmy Kane stayed on in New Haven that summer of 1914;
Phil to be near his precious sources in the Yale library; Jimmy to be
near his new job. As soon as his examinations were over he had gone to
work in a factory in a very humble capacity; but he was not destined to
remain there long in any capacity, nor was it written in the stars that
he was to complete his education at Yale.

My own reasons for clinging to New Haven were less definite. Sheer
physical inertia had something to do with it, no doubt; but chiefly I
stayed because New Haven in midsummer is a social desert; and in those
days my most urgent desire was to be alone. Apart from all else, the
breaking out of almost world-wide war had drastically, as if by an
operation for spiritual cataract, opened my inner eye, no longer a bliss
in solitude, to much that was trivial and self-satisfied and ridiculous
in one Ambrose Hunt, Esq. Tha