The Red Badge of Courage | Page 4

listened with eager ears to the words
of the tall soldier and to the varied comments of his comrades. After
receiving a fill of discussions concerning marches and attacks, he went
to his hut and crawled through an intricate hole that served it as a door.
He wished to be alone with some new thoughts that had lately come to
him.
He lay down on a wide bank that stretched across the end of the room.
In the other end, cracker boxes were made to serve as furniture. They
were grouped about the fireplace. A pic- ture from an illustrated weekly
was upon the log walls, and three rifles were paralleled on pegs.
Equipments hunt on handy projections, and some tin dishes lay upon a
small pile of firewood. A folded tent was serving as a roof. The
sunlight, without, beating upon it, made it glow a light yellow shade. A
small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the cluttered

floor. The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay chimney and
wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks
made end- less threats to set ablaze the whole establishment.
The youth was in a little trance of astonish- ment. So they were at last
going to fight. On the morrow, perhaps, there would be a battle, and he
would be in it. For a time he was obliged to labor to make himself
believe. He could not accept with assurance an omen that he was about
to mingle in one of those great affairs of the earth.
He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life--of vague and bloody
conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire. In visions he
had seen himself in many struggles. He had imagined peoples secure in
the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess. But awake he had regarded
battles as crimson blotches on the pages of the past. He had put them as
things of the bygone with his thought-images of heavy crowns and high
castles. There was a portion of the world's history which he had
regarded as the time of wars, but it, he thought, had been long gone
over the horizon and had disappeared forever.
From his home his youthful eyes had looked upon the war in his own
country with distrust. It must be some sort of a play affair. He had long
despaired of witnessing a Greeklike struggle. Such would be no more,
he had said. Men were better, or more timid. Secular and religious
education had effaced the throat-grappling in- stinct, or else firm
finance held in check the pas- sions.
He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements shook
the land. They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be
much glory in them. He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he
had longed to see it all. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures
extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds.
But his mother had discouraged him. She had affected to look with
some contempt upon the quality of his war ardor and patriotism. She
could calmly seat herself and with no apparent difficulty give him
many hundreds of reasons why he was of vastly more importance on
the farm than on the field of battle. She had had certain ways of

expression that told him that her statements on the subject came from a
deep con- viction. Moreover, on her side, was his belief that her ethical
motive in the argument was impregnable.
At last, however, he had made firm rebellion against this yellow light
thrown upon the color of his ambitions. The newspapers, the gossip of
the village, his own picturings had aroused him to an uncheckable
degree. They were in truth fighting finely down there. Almost every
day the newspapers printed accounts of a decisive victory.
One night, as he lay in bed, the winds had carried to him the clangoring
of the church bell as some enthusiast jerked the rope frantically to tell
the twisted news of a great battle. This voice of the people rejoicing in
the night had made him shiver in a prolonged ecstasy of ex- citement.
Later, he had gone down to his mother's room and had spoken thus:
"Ma, I'm going to enlist."
"Henry, don't you be a fool," his mother had replied. She had then
covered her face with the quilt. There was an end to the matter for that
night.
Nevertheless, the next morning he had gone to a town that was near his
mother's farm and had enlisted in a company that was forming there.
When he had returned home his mother was milking the brindle cow.
Four others stood waiting. "Ma, I've enlisted," he had said