And for long the
Kaiser kept that callous, imperious look. But at last he, even he, at
last he nearly wept. And the phantom turned then and swept him back
over Saxony, and into Prussia again and over the sentries' heads, back
to his comfortable bed where it was so hard to sleep.
And though they had seen thousands of merry homes, homes that can
never be merry now, shrines of perpetual mourning; though they had
seen thousands of smiling German children, who will never be born now,
but were only the visions of hopes blasted by him; for all the leagues
over which he had been so ruthlessly hurried, dawn was yet barely
breaking.
He had looked on the first few thousand homes of which he had robbed
all time, and which he must see with his eyes before he may go hence.
The first night of the Kaiser's punishment was accomplished.
The English Spirit
By the end of the South African war Sergeant Cane had got one thing
very well fixed in his mind, and that was that war was an overrated
amusement. He said he ``was fed up with it,'' partly because that
misused metaphor was then new, partly because every one was saying it:
he felt it right down in his bones, and he had a long memory.
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