Moreover, she
was a soldier's daughter, and to be a soldier's daughter was, next to being
a soldier, the noblest thing in the world. For that was about the time
when, under the inspiration of _The Story of the Hundred Days_, I had set
out with a bag containing a nightshirt and a toothbrush to enlist in the
Black Watch. (It was a forlorn adventure that went no further than the
railway station.) Finally she had given me, as a token of her love, _Poor
Little Gaspard's Drum_, wherein I read of Napoleon and the Egyptian desert,
and, above all, of the Mamelukes. How that word thrilled me! "The
Mamelukes!" What could one do but fall in love with a girl who used such
incantations?
But this is not the true calf love. That comes with the down upon the lip.
People laugh at "calf love," but one might as well laugh at the wonder of
dawn or the coming of spring. When David Copperfield fell in love with the
eldest Miss Larkins, he was really in love with the opening universe, and
the eldest Miss Larkins happened to be the only available lightning
conductor for his emotion.
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