Gilpin observer., 1911-04-06

best Of our civilization seems to be
towering into. Physically. 1t would
have been hard to suggest an improve
ment In him. he approached SO near
the ideal standards. He was fine
grained, supple, slender, small jointed.
thoroughbred from head to heel.
Intellectually, he had been good
enough to go through the academy at
West Point with credit and to grad
uate high enough In his class to be
assigned to service in the cavalry. His
standards Of conduct. his ideas of hon
or and morality had been about the
same as those of the best third of his
classmates. II his fellow officers in
the Philippines, during the year or
two he spent in the service, had been
asked to pick flaw in him, which
they would have been reluctant to do,
they would have said that he seemed
to them bit too thin-skinned and
rather fastidious; that was what his
chum and only intimate friend, Perry
Hunter. said about him at any rate.
But he could afford to be fastidi-
GUS. for he had about all man could
want, one would think. For three
generations they had taken wealth
for granted in the Cayley family, and
with it had come breeding, security
of social position. simplicity and ease
in making friends. both among men
and women. In short, there could be
no doubt at all that up to his twenty
ninth year Fate had been ironically
kind to Philip Cayley. She had given
him no hint, no preparation for the
stunning blow that was to fall upon
him. suddenly. out OF 30 clear sky.
When it did fall, It cut his life
clean across: so that when he thought
back to that time now. 1t seemed to
him that the Lieutenant Cayley of the
United States army had died over
there in the Philippines, and that he,
the man who was now soaring In those
great circles through the arctic sky,
was a chance inheritor Of his name
and of his memory.
He had set out one day at the head
| of a small scouting party, the best
liked man in the regiment, secure in
! the respect, in the almost fatherly re-
| gard, Of his colonel, proudly conscious
| of the almost idolatrous admiration
of his men and the younger fflcers.
He had gone out believing that no
one ever had truer friend than he
possessed in Perry Hunter, his class
mate at West Point, his fellow officer
| in the regiment. the conhdant of all
| his hopes and ideals.
! He had come back, after a fort
| nights absence. to find. his name
smeared with disgrace. himself judged
and condemned, unheard, in the opin-
ion of the mess. And that was not
the worst Of it. The same blow which
had deprived him of the regard OF the
only people in the world who matter
ed to him, destroyed, also, root and
branch, his affection for the one man
/ Of whom he had made an intimate.
The only feeling that 1t would be pos
| sible for him to entertain for Perry
Hunter again must be half-pitying.
half-incredulous contempt And if
that was his feeling for the man he
deeply. what musl be it for the rest of
humankind? What did 1t matter what
they thought of him or what they did
to him? All he wanted of human SO.
ciety was to escape from 1t.
He fell to wondering. as he hung.
suspended. over that rosy expanse of
fieecy fog, whether. were the thing to
do over again, he would act as he had
acted five years ago; whether he
would content himself with a single
disdainful denial OF the monstrous
thing they charged him with; whether
he would resign again. under fire. and
go away, leaving his tarnished name
for the davis to peck at.
| Heretofore he had always answered
that question with a fierce afiirma-
tive. Today It left him wondering.
Had he stayed. had he paid the price
/ that would have been necessary to
found his wings. so much was clear.
He would never have spent those
four years In the wilderness, working,
! experimenting, taking his life in his
hands, day after day. while he master
ed the art that no man had ever mas
tered before.
He had set himself this task because
1t was the only one he knew that did
not involve contact with his fellow.
beings. He must have something that
he could work at alone. Work and
solitude were two things that he had
felt an overmastering craving for. And
the possibility he had faced with a
light heart every morning-the possi
bility of sudden and violent death
before night, had been no more to
him than an agreeable spice to the
days work.
1t was not until he had actually
learned to fly. had literally shaken the
dust of the earth from his feet and
taken to the sky as his abode, that his
wound had healed. The three months
that he had spent in this upper arctic
air, a-wing for 16 hours out OF "a, had