This Side of Paradise F. Scott Fitzgerald (mini ebook reader .txt) đ
- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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She was the only girl he ever knew with whom he could understand how another man might be preferred. Often Amory met wives whom he had known as debutantes, and looking intently at them imagined that he found something in their faces which said:
âOh, if I could only have gotten you!â Oh, the enormous conceit of the man!
But that night seemed a night of stars and singing and Claraâs bright soul still gleamed on the ways they had trod.
âGolden, golden is the airâ ââ he chanted to the little pools of water.â ââ ⊠âGolden is the air, golden notes from golden mandolins, golden frets of golden violins, fair, oh, wearily fair.â ââ ⊠Skeins from braided basket, mortals may not hold; oh, what young extravagant God, who would know or ask it?â ââ ⊠who could give such goldâ ââ âŠâ
Amory Is Resentful
Slowly and inevitably, yet with a sudden surge at the last, while Amory talked and dreamed, war rolled swiftly up the beach and washed the sands where Princeton played. Every night the gymnasium echoed as platoon after platoon swept over the floor and shuffled out the basketball markings. When Amory went to Washington the next weekend he caught some of the spirit of crisis which changed to repulsion in the Pullman car coming back, for the berths across from him were occupied by stinking aliensâ âGreeks, he guessed, or Russians. He thought how much easier patriotism had been to a homogeneous race, how much easier it would have been to fight as the Colonies fought, or as the Confederacy fought. And he did no sleeping that night, but listened to the aliens guffaw and snore while they filled the car with the heavy scent of latest America.
In Princeton everyone bantered in public and told themselves privately that their deaths at least would be heroic. The literary students read Rupert Brooke passionately; the lounge-lizards worried over whether the government would permit the English-cut uniform for officers; a few of the hopelessly lazy wrote to the obscure branches of the War Department, seeking an easy commission and a soft berth.
Then, after a week, Amory saw Burne and knew at once that argument would be futileâ âBurne had come out as a pacifist. The socialist magazines, a great smattering of Tolstoy, and his own intense longing for a cause that would bring out whatever strength lay in him, had finally decided him to preach peace as a subjective ideal.
âWhen the German army entered Belgium,â he began, âif the inhabitants had gone peaceably about their business, the German army would have been disorganized inâ ââ
âI know,â Amory interrupted, âIâve heard it all. But Iâm not going to talk propaganda with you. Thereâs a chance that youâre rightâ âbut even so weâre hundreds of years before the time when nonresistance can touch us as a reality.â
âBut, Amory, listenâ ââ
âBurne, weâd just argueâ ââ
âVery well.â
âJust one thingâ âI donât ask you to think of your family or friends, because I know they donât count a picayune with you beside your sense of dutyâ âbut, Burne, how do you know that the magazines you read and the societies you join and these idealists you meet arenât just plain German?â
âSome of them are, of course.â
âHow do you know they arenât all pro-Germanâ âjust a lot of weak onesâ âwith German-Jewish names.â
âThatâs the chance, of course,â he said slowly. âHow much or how little Iâm taking this stand because of propaganda Iâve heard, I donât know; naturally I think that itâs my most innermost convictionâ âit seems a path spread before me just now.â
Amoryâs heart sank.
âBut think of the cheapness of itâ âno oneâs really going to martyr you for being a pacifistâ âitâs just going to throw you in with the worstâ ââ
âI doubt it,â he interrupted.
âWell, it all smells of Bohemian New York to me.â
âI know what you mean, and thatâs why Iâm not sure Iâll agitate.â
âYouâre one man, Burneâ âgoing to talk to people who wonât listenâ âwith all Godâs given you.â
âThatâs what Stephen must have thought many years ago. But he preached his sermon and they killed him. He probably thought as he was dying what a waste it all was. But you see, Iâve always felt that Stephenâs death was the thing that occurred to Paul on the road to Damascus, and sent him to preach the word of Christ all over the world.â
âGo on.â
âThatâs allâ âthis is my particular duty. Even if right now Iâm just a pawnâ âjust sacrificed. God! Amoryâ âyou donât think I like the Germans!â
âWell, I canât say anything elseâ âI get to the end of all the logic about nonresistance, and there, like an excluded middle, stands the huge spectre of man as he is and always will be. And this spectre stands right beside the one logical necessity of Tolstoyâs, and the other logical necessity of Nietzscheâsâ ââ Amory broke off suddenly. âWhen are you going?â
âIâm going next week.â
âIâll see you, of course.â
As he walked away it seemed to Amory that the look in his face bore a great resemblance to that in Kerryâs when he had said goodbye under Blair Arch two years before. Amory wondered unhappily why he could never go into anything with the primal honesty of those two.
âBurneâs a fanatic,â he said to Tom, âand heâs dead wrong and, Iâm inclined to think, just an unconscious pawn in the hands of anarchistic publishers and German-paid rag waversâ âbut he haunts meâ âjust leaving everything worth whileâ ââ
Burne left in a quietly dramatic manner a week later. He sold all his possessions and came down to the room to say goodbye, with a battered old bicycle, on which he intended to ride to his home in Pennsylvania.
âPeter the Hermit bidding farewell to Cardinal Richelieu,â suggested Alec, who was lounging in the window-seat as Burne and Amory shook hands.
But Amory was not in a mood for that, and as he saw
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