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137
The Solitary Summer
·
Elizabeth Von Arnim
125
We
have
every
grade
of
greatness
here,
from
that
innocent
being
the
ensign,
a
creature
of
apparent
modesty
and
blushes,
who
is
obliged
to
stand
up
and
drain
his
glass
each
time
a
superior
chooses
to
drink
to
him,
and
who
sits
on
the
hardest
chairs
and
looks
for
the
balls
while
we
play
tennis,
to
the
general,
invariably
delightful,
whose
brains
have
carried
him
triumphantly
through
the
annual
perils
of
weeding
out,
who
is
as
distinguished
in
looks
and
manners
as
he
is
in
abilities,
and
has
the
crowning
merit
of
being
manifestly
happy
in
the
society
of
women.
Nothing
lower
than
a
colonel
is
to
me
an
object
of
interest.
The
lower
you
get
the
more
officers
there
are,
and
the
harder
it
is
to
see
the
promising
ones
in
the
crowd;
but
once
past
the
rank
of
major
the
air
gets
very
much
cleared
by
the
merciless
way
they
have
been
weeded
out,
and
the
higher
officers
are
the
very
flower
of
middle-aged
German
males.
As
for
those
below,
a
lieutenant
is
a
bright
and
beautiful
being
who
admires
no
one
so
much
as
himself;
a
captain
is
generally
newly
married,
having
reached
the
stage
of
increased
pay
which
makes
a
wife
possible,
and,
being
often
still
in
love
with
her,
is
ineffective
for
social
purposes;
and
a
major
is
a
man
with
a
yearly
increasing
family,
for
whose
wants
his
pay
is
inadequate,
a
person
continually
haunted
by
the
fear
of
approaching
weeding,
after
which
his
career
is
ended,
he
is
poorer
than
ever,
and
being
no
longer
young
and
only
used
to
a
soldier's
life,
is
almost
always
quite
incapable
of
starting
afresh.
Even
the
children
of
light
find
it
difficult
to
start
afresh
with
any
success
after
forty,
and
the
retired
officer
is
never
a
child
of
light;
if
he
were,
he
would
not
have
been
weeded
out.
You
meet
him
everywhere,
shorn
of
the
glories
of
his
uniform,
easily
recognisable
by
the
bad
fit
of
his
civilian
clothes,
wandering
about
like
a
ship
without
a
rudder;
and
as
time
goes
on
he
settles
down
to
the
inevitable,
and
passes
his
days
in
a
fourth-floor
flat
in
the
suburbs,
eats,
drinks,
sleeps,
reads
the
Kreuzzeitung
and
nothing
else,
plays
at
cards
in
the
day-time,
grows
gouty,
and
worries
his
wife.
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