The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

His smooth face was flushed, and his hands were thrust sulkily into his trousers’ pockets. “It’s a lie! that’s all it is–a thunderin’ lie!” said another private loudly. Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chim- neys. A negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement of twoscore soldiers was deserted.

When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts. To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very brilliant campaign. “We’re goin’ ‘way up the river, cut across, an’ come around in behint ’em.” “We’re goin’ t’ move t’ morrah–sure,” he said pompously to a group in the company street. He adopted the important air of a herald in red and gold. He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable friend, who had heard it from a truthful cavalryman, who had heard it from his trustworthy brother, one of the order- lies at division headquarters. He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike. Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to wash a shirt. A river, amber- tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army’s feet and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp- fires set in the low brows of distant hills. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awak- ened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. THE cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TOġ8 3 3 estabiish establish 40 3 2 skirmish skirmish-ġ30 2 recognzied recognized 130 4 12 could a’ could ‘aġ39 2 4 not began not begun 193 2 16 illusions to allusions to Note: I have tried to retain the inconsistent renderings of contractions as joined or separate, e.g., “we ‘ll” or “we’ll.” I have made the following changes to the text: PAGE PARA.

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane