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Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury), 1876-1944

"Paths of Glory Impressions of War Written at and Near the Front"

I am going to try now to tell how it looked to
us.
I am inclined to think I passed this way a year before, or a little
less, though I cannot be quite certain as to that. Traveling 'cross
country, the country is likely to look different from the way it looked
when you viewed it from the window of a railroad carriage.
Of this much, though, I am sure: If I did not pass, through this little
town of Montignies St. Christophe then, at least I passed through fifty
like it--each a single line of gray houses strung, like beads on a cord,
along a white, straight road, with fields behind and elms in front; each
with its small, ugly church, its wine shop, its drinking trough, its
priest in black, and its one lone gendarme in his preposterous housings
of saber and belt and shoulder straps.
I rather imagine I tried to think up something funny to say about the
shabby grandeur of the gendarme or the acid flavor of the cooking
vinegar sold at the drinking place under the name of wine; for that time
I was supposed to be writing humorous articles on European travel.


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