There was no time to pick them up during the first months—the whole business was too wild and grim. The horror has not decreased, but nerves and sight are beginning to be disciplined to it. In the earlier days, moreover, such fragments of experience as one got were torn from their setting like bits of flesh scattered2 by shrapnel. Now things that seemed disjointed are beginning to link themselves together, and the broken bones of history are rising from the battle-fields.
I can’t say that, in this respect, all the members of the Relief Corps have made the most of their opportunity. Some are unobservant, or perhaps simply inarticulate; others, when going beyond the bald statistics of their job, tend to drop into sentiment and cinema scenes; and none but H. Macy Greer has the gift of making the thing told seem as true as if one had seen it. So it is on H. Macy Greer that I depend, and when his motor dashes him back to Paris for supplies I never fail to hunt him down and coax3 him to my rooms for dinner and a long cigar.
Greer is a small hard-muscled youth, with pleasant manners, a sallow face, straight hemp-coloured hair and grey eyes of unexpected inwardness. He has a voice like thick soup, and speaks with the slovenly4 drawl of the new generation of Americans, dragging his words along like reluctant dogs on a string, and depriving his narrative5 of every shade of expression that intelligent intonation6 gives. But his eyes see so much that they make one see even what his foggy voice obscures.
Some of his tales are dark and dreadful, some are unutterably sad, and some end in a huge laugh of irony7. I am not sure how I ought to classify the one I have written down here.
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1
corps
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n.(通信等兵种的)部队;(同类作的)一组 | |
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2
scattered
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adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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3
coax
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v.哄诱,劝诱,用诱哄得到,诱取 | |
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4
slovenly
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adj.懒散的,不整齐的,邋遢的 | |
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5
narrative
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n.叙述,故事;adj.叙事的,故事体的 | |
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6
intonation
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n.语调,声调;发声 | |
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7
irony
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n.反语,冷嘲;具有讽刺意味的事,嘲弄 | |
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