Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1920-02-02

| want you to take my Crox de
Guerre. . When l go nowhere"
Even when speech returned to the
individual he was man of curt re-
sponses and singing monosyllables-
a problem to the surgeons, problem
to the nurses and (if the expression in
his eyes meant anything), an over
Whelming problem to himself. 1t ap-
peared that, after all, it wasn't simply
women that he hated-it was the uni
verse.
His military book implied that he
had no parents, no close relations, no
friends to notify, no fixed abode. He
received no visitors, no letters, no
packages freighted with magical de-
light. But to those who pitied him in
all his loneliness he was utterly con-
temptuOus; he even went so far as to
flip sidelong to the floor a religious
post card rendered him by a devout
and sentimental passer-by, and he did
it in her presence, unashamed. Later,
when a smiling orderly picked up that
post card and tucked it under his pill
low he wGs no less contemptuous in
permitting 1t to remain. But the one
stupendOus fact which, more than all
else combined, made him an object of
bewildered curiosity was this-that of
the scores and scores of men with
head-wounds who were reborn at Neu-
lily that spring and summer, he was
the only one who had never asked for
a mirror.
This, Of itself, wouldn't have been
astonishing as long as he delayed in
the preliminary stages of recovery, for
now and then man with head-wounds
proves to be representative; but in
the second stage it was remarkable,
and in the third stage it was unique.
The staff held it to be extraordinary
from social as well as from a path
illogical viewpoint, that a man so ter
ribly disfigured should have no inter-
eSt-not even morbid nterest-in
his own appearance. And it wasn't
that the Individual was simply indif-
III ChI W lllC llllllOl VII TIC NOllll Ill ,
his aversion to it was active and ener-
getiC; he tlinched, and mOtiOned it
franticalIy away as though the mere
conception of seeing himself as others
saw him was too repellant, and too
unthinkable to endure.
There came a day in April when
photograph was requested of him.
Surely he knew where there was
likeness of himself, didn't he? His
old passport photograph, which had
mysteriously disappeared, or
The Individual glanced up from his
present task; the wound in his arm
was still annoying and he was alb
sorbed in learning to write with his
left hand.
"What for" he muttered.
"Why," said the nurse, cheerfully,
They'll take your picture for guide
and make you look almost exactly the
way you did before"
The Individual from America sat up
straight, so that the nurse was startled
by his animation, which was without
parallel in his local history.
"Whatw he said.
Certainly" The nurse spoke in
the tone one uses to an ailing child.
you've known that, haven't your
The Individuals voice was queerly
unmanageable and strained. you
mean to say they're going to make me
look the way Could they do that?
Could they? Even nOwW
"Why, Of course" she assured him.
"YOu never told me that" he said.
passiOnately. "Why didn't you? Why
couldn't you have told me! And here
I've been :" He put his hands to
his bandaged face and seemed to
shrink within himself. Then all at once