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While sitting in the hotel office one afternoon contemplating matters most seriously, and feeling silly and foolish over my winter's exploit, a young, despondent-looking chap came into the office carrying a valise and bag, about half filled with something. He registered, and after making rates with the landlord, took a seat near me. He had a woe-begone look, and seemed nervous and anxious.
As he finally entered Shuter's tent, which bore the dignified title of store, a scene that would have appeared strangely fantastic to dwellers in cities, presented itself. Congregated together were about fifty sunburnt laborers, arrayed in coarse woollen shirts. To their despondent-looking trousers the blue tenacious prairie mud clung like glue.
The servant who answered it replied in the affirmative when asked if the gentleman of the house was in, and ushered the visitor into a richly furnished reception-room leading from the hall. A few minutes later a sorrowful, despondent-looking gentleman entered, and politely, although somewhat absently, saluted his caller.
Two men in the front went down, three or four of their fellows leaped over their prostrate forms, and then several of those who followed stumbled and fell, panic ensued, and once more the company was in full flight, followed slowly by a couple of despondent-looking officers, one of whom turned while the carbine bullets were flying around him to shake his sword at his enemies, his fellow taking his cue from this act to contemptuously raise his kepi in a mocking salute.
Between these two sets of lines, shells were piled of all sizes, I should think some hundreds of thousands of shells altogether, wet and shining in the rain. French reservists, soldiers from Madagascar, and some Senegalese were busy at different points loading and unloading the precious freights. A little way from me were despondent-looking German prisoners handling timber.
While he stood battling with his rebellious heart, he might have noticed, had he been facing the house, a young woman, dressed in white, come to the door soon after the dance had started, and look around the garden as if searching for someone. Finally her eyes travelled to the far end of the garden, where a lonely, despondent-looking figure was standing, and then she started eagerly forward.
Then the "kids" set about the construction of a new residence, which stood farther from the parade ground than any hut in the row except the big cabin of "old Brownie," the "greasy cook," who called us to "bean oh!" with so resonant a shout, and majestically served out our rations of pork, "salt horse," coffee long-boiled and sickeningly sweet, hardtack, and the daily loaf of a singularly despondent-looking bread.
In one corner lolled a despondent-looking lay-figure in a moth-eaten Spanish cloak; in another lay a heap of plaster-casts, gigantic hands and feet, broken-nosed masks of the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Hercules Farnese, and other foreigners of distinction. Upon the chimney-piece were displayed a pair of foils, a lute, a skull, an antique German drinking-mug, and several very modern empty bottles.
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