What are you afraid of? Courage, comrade.
There is a mean between basking through life with the smiling
contentment of the alligator, and shivering through it with the
aggressive sensibility of the Lama determined to die at every cross
word. To bear it as a man we must also feel it as a man. My
philosophic friend, seek not to comfort a brother standing by the
coffin of his child with the cheery suggestion that it will be all
the same a hundred years hence, because, for one thing, the
observation is not true: the man is changed for all eternity--
possibly for the better, but don't add that. A soldier with a
bullet in his neck is never quite the man he was. But he can laugh
and he can talk, drink his wine and ride his horse. Now and again,
towards evening, when the weather is trying, the sickness will come
upon him. You will find him on a couch in a dark corner.
"Hallo! old fellow, anything up?"
"Oh, just a twinge, the old wound, you know. I will be better in a
little while."
Shut the door of the dark room quietly. I should not stay even to
sympathize with him if I were you. The men will be coming to screw
the coffin down soon. I think he would like to be alone with it
till then.
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