Trooper Tales — page 189: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ABERRATION OF PRIVATE BROWN. Brown had a faculty of listening while others talked. He was a big cavalryman, and, putting it with studied mildness, he was not pleased with his job. Patriotism was noble once—about the time when the desks of liter- ary editors were deluged with spasms on the Maine blow- up—and Brown had become a trooper ere his unhealthy delirium had pined away. Many troopers were weeded out by the flies and fever of a Tampa summer camp, but Brown had been one of the tanned and haggard cavalrymen, too leathery to get a sick furlough, and who were among the first American soldiers to view the tropical shore and the mist-hung hills of Porto Rico from the dirty deck of a transport. And Brown was very unhappy in that land of few birds and fewer flowers. The troop headquarters was in Ciales, away up among the Great White Cliffs. And this night a bunch of cavalrymen sat in the plaza of the tiny town, and talked lingeringly about God’s country over in the northwest. The hill breezes were fresh with a shower- odor, and pungent with the perfume of great orange groves, borne up from the valleys. Stars were mellowing Gomichbooks (EC)