Tooley, and the best cartoonists, and our only really humorous paper,
_Knife_, are on that side."
"But they are only humorists," cried Sam, "mere professional jokers.
You can't expect serious sense from them. They are mere buffoons. The
serious people here, such as Dr. Amen, are with us to a man."
"I saw old Amen get caught the other day," said Cleary. "I was
interviewing the colonel of the 15th, and in came Amen and began
talking about the Porsslanese--what barbarians they were, no religion,
no belief, no faith. Why, the idea of self-sacrifice was utterly
unknown to them! Just then in came a young officer and said, 'Colonel,
the son of that old native we're going to shoot this afternoon for
looting, is bothering us and says he wants to be shot instead of his
father. What shall we do with him?' Amen said good-day and cleared out.
By the way, the colonel of the 15th is in a hole just now. He was shut
up in the legations, you know, and all the women there were down on him
because he wouldn't make the sentries salute them when the men were
dead tired with watching. They are charging him with cowardice.
There'll never be an end of this backbiting. It's almost as sickening
as the throat-cutting and stabbing. I confess I'm getting sick of it
all. When you see a private shoot an old native for not blacking his
boots, when the poor fellow was trying to understand him and couldn't,
and smiling as best he could, it's rather tough; and I've seen twenty
babies if I've seen one lying in the streets with a bayonet hole in
them.
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