The Courage of the CommonplaceAndrews, Mary Raymond Shipman
General
The Courage of the Commonplace
Andrews, Mary Raymond Shipman
Yale University -- Fiction
The town was alive with bands and cheers and shouts and marching;
the distinct noises rose and fell and fused and separated, but kept
their distance. When one body of sound, which unnoticed by the
lovers had been growing less vague, more compact, broke all at
once into loud proximity--men marching, men shouting, men singing.
The two, hand tight in hand, started, looked at each other,
listened--and then a name came in a dozen sonorous voices,
as they used to shout it in college days, across the Berkeley Oval.
"McLean! McLean!" they called.
"Oh, Johnny McLean!" and "Come out there, oh, Johnny McLean!"
That was Baby Thomas.
"By Jove, they've trapped me," he said, smiling in the dark and
holding the hand tighter as the swinging steps stopped in front
of the house of the garden. "Brant must have told."
"They've certainly found you," the girl said. Her arms,
lifted slowly, went about his neck swiftly. "You're mine--but
you're theirs to-night. I haven't a right to so much of
you even. You're theirs. Go." And she held him. But in a
second she had pushed him away. "Go," she said. "You're
theirs, bless every one of them."
She was standing alone in the dark, sweet garden and there was
a roar in the street which meant that he had opened the door
and they had seen him. And with that there were shouts of
"Put him up"--"Carry him"--"Carry the boy," and laughter and
shouting and then again the measured tread of many men retreating
down the street, and men's voices singing together. The girl
in the dark garden stood laughing, crying, and listened.
"Mother of men!"--
the deep voices sang--
"Mother of men grown strong in giving--
Honor to him thy light have led;
Rich in the toil of thousands living,
Proud of the deeds of thousands dead!
We who have felt thy power, and known thee,
We in whose lives thy lights avail,
High, in our hearts enshrined, enthrone thee,
Mother of men, old Yale!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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