The Red Badge Of Courage
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Crane, Stephen
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 271095
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Wiretap Electronic Text Archive
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: badge.txt
subject: youth
subject: yeh
subject: man
subject: growing
subject: troughs
subject: liquid
subject: mud
subject: proper
subject: thoroughfares
subject: crane
subject: stephen
subject: red
subject: badge
subject: courage
subject: american
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: crane-red-376.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: crane-red-376.htm
sort title: Red Badge Of Courage, The
full text: [pg/etext93/badge10.txt] THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE by STEVEN CRANE July, 1993 [Etext #73] Etext producer: Arthur Smith, Materials Science Division, Bldg 223, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, 60439 (708) 252-7715 asmith@icose.msd.anl.gov The Red Badge of Courage An Episode of the American Civil War Chapter 1 The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. 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. Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to wash a shirt. He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike. 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 orderlies at division headquarters. He adopted the important air of a herald in red and gold. "We're goin' t' move t'morrah--sure," he said pompously to a group in the company street. "We're goin' 'way up the river, cut across, an' come around in behint 'em." To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very brilliant campaign. When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts. A negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement of twoscore soldiers was deserted. He sat mournfully down. Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chimneys. "It's a lie! that's all it is--a thunderin' lie!" said another private loudly. His smooth…