Play the Game!

by Ruth Comfort Mitchell

Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,

But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote—

Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!

Jimsy King, who was lolling on the couch, sat up, his eyes kindling. "Gee...." he breathed. Honor's cheeks were scarlet and she was breathing hard and fast. Only the new boy was unmoved, his pale face still pale, his shadowed eyes calm. Stephen Lorimer kept that picture of them always in his heart; it was, he came to think, symbol and prophecy. He swung into the second verse, his voice warming:

The sand of the desert is sodden red;

Red with the wreck of a square that broke;

The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,

And the regiment blind with dust and smoke:

The River of Death has brimmed his banks;

And England's far, and Honor a name,