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

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


There was nothing of the parrot about him now, Here was a man part watch
dog and part hawk. His cheeks and the flanges of his nostrils were
thickly hair-lined with those little red-and-blue veins that are to be
found in the texture of good American paper currency and in the faces of
elderly men who have lived much out-of-doors during their lives. His
jowls were heavy and pendulous like a mastiff's. His frontal bone came
down low and straight so that under the flat arch of the brow his small,
very bright agate-blue eyes looked out as from beneath half-closed
shutters. His hair was clipped close to his scalp and the shape of his
skull showed, rounded and bulgy; not the skull of a thinker, nor yet the
skull of a creator, just the skull of a natural-born fighting man. The
big, ridgy veins in the back of his neck stood out like window-cords
from a close smocking of fine wrinkles. The neck itself was tanned to a
brickdust red. A gnawed white mustache bristled on his upper lip. He
was tall without seeming to be tall and broad without appearing broad,
and he was old enough for a grandfather and spry enough for his own
grandchild.


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