158 HENRY HILL GOODELL 



field, grimed with powder, ay, sometimes black with guilt, 

 is life, half-humanities, half-brutalities. Shakespere 

 makes Norfolk in the play say: 



"As gentle and as jocund, as to jest 

 Go I to fight." 



There are natures, I suppose, occasionally, who really 

 feel the joy of conflict and go as jocund to a fray as to a 

 feast; but in my heart of hearts I cannot help suspecting 

 them. Thank heaven! they are few and far between. No- 

 body sane and fairly intelligent ever went out to try conclu- 

 sions with death in this dancing humor, and the heroism 

 of the boys in blue had little of pride and pomp, of sounding 

 music and streaming banner and "Vive PEmpereur" bois- 

 terousness about it. No! there was nothing of the kid- 

 glove review or pomp and finish of a dress parade about 

 their battles. With faces drawn and gray, with heart in 

 mouth and pulse beating like a trip-hammer, men stood and 

 fought, wondering whether they could possibly hold on a 

 single moment longer, wondering whether it were possible 

 they could ever get out alive, and yet fixing their unyield- 

 ing feet as firmly in the earth as a badger's claws and mak- 

 ing a badger's bitter fight, simply because it was the hard 

 but single road to their full duty. Homely heroes they were, 

 but as genuine specimens as ever fought at the front and 

 fell where they fought. 



It is not pleasant to think that a man with heroism 

 enough to rally a losing fight by personal exposure should 

 not be noble all the way through, but human nature is often 

 like a pocket-mine out of which may come great nuggets, 

 but no continuous yield. So the man who astonishes you 



