Page:Aladdin O'Brien (1902).pdf/220

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as three times to the same man, and he began to steal from the poets and musicians that he knew in order to keep abreast of his own original powers of production. He even went so far as to draw inspiration from men of uneven heights stood in line: he would hum the intervals as scored by their heads on an imaginary staff and fashion his tune accordingly, but this tended to a somewhat compressed range and was not always happy in its results. His efforts, however, were appreciated, and the emaciated young Irishman became a most exceptional prophet, and received honor in his own land.

For the rest, being a staff-officer, he was kept busy and rode hundreds of extra miles through the rain. It was a large army, as inexperienced as it was large, and it stood in great need of being kept in contact with itself. If you lived at one end of it and wanted to know what was going on at the other end, you had to travel about as far as from New York to New Haven. The army proper, marching