The rugged, illuminated face was turned to him, the deep eyes rested squarely upon his. “You have perhaps forgotten,” he said. “You are younger than I am and too you have been for a long time with the whites—but I remember well the time when we were boys and our great head-chief Black Star used to sit and talk with us. Yes, you have perhaps forgotten,” he repeated, and his look, just touched with yearning, rested upon the younger man. “But I remember—I have never forgotten what he used to say to us. ‘Be brave,’ he would tell us. ‘That is the chief thing to learn; to do what each one believes is right, to speak for the right, everywhere, always. To be fearless of tongues, of persecution, to take counsel with our own minds and being sure to speak out surely. That,’ he always said to us, ‘and that only, is the man’s part.’”
—Grace Coolidge.
VI—THE NIGHT ATTACK
When B Company marched out of the camp for the morning skirmish practice, Tom Kennedy of squad five was feeling depressed. His corporal, John Wheeler, had just given him a scolding, and now wore a stern expression on his youthful yet somehow granite-like countenance. Kennedy, glancing out of the corner of his eye, saw and interpreted the expression.
He was a thin, pale youth, who had gone from high school into the bank, where he was employed in a humble capacity as clerk. His lack of physical strength had prevented him from taking part in school athletics; the impecuniosity of his family had kept him from a share in many healthful, boyish activities. He had been a bookish boy and had shown himself quick at figures; many of his classmates envied him when, after graduation, a subordinate place in the First National Bank had been given him. In his second year of service there he was promoted to a clerkship; and when the bank announced its willingness to let some of its employees attend the military training camp, Kennedy had presented himself as a volunteer.
Without experience in the handling of arms, without natural dexterity and without the self-confidence that a boy derives from participation in sports or from a life outdoors, Kennedy was not the most promising of “rookies.” He would have made a better showing in the early drills perhaps had he been less concerned with the dread of being regarded as a “dub.” What made him especially self-conscious was the fact that his corporal was the son of the president of the First National Bank. It seemed to Kennedy, inexperienced youth that he was, that his whole future might depend on the impression he made on the president’s son.
He had long known John Wheeler by reputation. Wheeler had been halfback on his college football team; he was a yachtsman of more than local renown. As corporal, he was alert, industrious and energetic; his efficiency caused Kennedy to be only the more keenly aware of his own incompetence. The other men in the tent were all older than he, all better educated than he, and without in the least intending to make him feel inferior they did make him feel so. As a matter of fact, they thought he was an unassuming and obliging person, who had, as one of them expressed it, not much small change in conversation.
Now, after a week at the camp, Kennedy had begun to make himself a nuisance to his companions—the thing that he had most dreaded being. He had caught cold, and had coughed at frequent intervals throughout the night; he had buried his head under his blankets and tried to suppress the coughs, and he had blown his nose with as little reverberation as possible, but he had, nevertheless, received intimations that he was disturbing the sleep of his tent mates. In the morning one of them, Morrison, a student in a medical school, offered him some quinine pills and advised him to report at sick call. But Kennedy had resolved not to be knocked out by sickness; he thanked Morrison for the pills and said he thought he should get through all right. His feelings were hurt, however, when after breakfast Wheeler said:
“Come, fellows, let’s roll up the tent; if we don’t give the sun and air a chance in here, we’ll all of us be sniffling.”
The corporal started in to undo the guy ropes and then exclaimed wrathfully. “Who’s the man that tied these ropes in hard knots? He’s a landlubber, all right.”