radiance and simplicity immingled in
his sense of things.

He would have served his country well as one of its clearest and best
citizens, far more impressively by the growth and expansion of his
soul in his own manly vision, than by the questionable value of his
labors in the military service. He did what he could, gladly and
heroically, but he had become too weakened by the siege of physical
reverses that pursued his otherwise strong body to endure the strain
of labor he performed, or wanted to accomplish. He knew long before he
entered service the significance of discipline from very profound
experience with life from childhood onward. Life had come to him
voluminously because he was one who attracted life to him,
electrically. He did not "whine" or "postpone," for he was in all of
his hours at least mentally and spiritually equal to the world in all
of its aspects. He was physically not there for the thing he
volunteered to do, despite the appearance of manly strength in him, or
thought he would be able to do. He hoped strongly to serve. None knew
his secret so well as himself, and he kept his own secret royally and
amicably.

Exceptional maturity of understanding of life, of nature, and all the
little mysteries that are the shape of human moments, was
conspicuously evidenced for as long as his intimates remember. The
extraordinary measure of calm contained in his last pictures and in so
many of the drawings done in moments of rest in camp is evidence of
all this. He had a boy's brightness and certainty of the fairness of
things, joined with a man's mastery of the simple problem. He was a
true executive in material affairs and his vision was another part of
the business of existence.

As I have said, Rex Slinkard had the priceless poise of the true lyric
poet, and it was the ordered system in his vision that proved him. He
knew the value of his attitudes and he was certain that perfection is
imperishable, and strove with a poet's calm intensity toward that. He
had found his Egypt, his Assyria, his Greece, and his own specific
Nirvana at his feet everywhere.

As he stood attending to the duties of irrigation and the ripening of
the alfalfa crops, he spent the moments otherwise lost in carving
pebbles he found about him with rare gestures and profiles, either of
his own face or body which he knew well, or the grace of other bodies
and faces he had seen. He was always the young eye on things, an avid
eye sure of