The Battle of the Lamps
things happening!" and he shuddered ungovernably.
"Go on," said Buck, shortly. "Get on."
"As we walked wearily round the corners, something happened. When something happens, it happens first, and you see it afterwards. It happens of itself, and you have nothing to do with it. It proves a dreadful thing—that there are other things besides one's self. I can only put it in this way. We went round one turning, two turnings, three turnings, four turnings, five. Then I lifted myself slowly up from the gutter where I had been shot half senseless, and was beaten down again by living men crashing on top of me, and the world was full of roaring, and big men rolling about like nine-pins."
Buck looked at his map with knitted brows.
"Was that Portobello Road?" he asked.
"Yes," said Barker. "Yes; Portobello Road—I saw it afterwards; but, my God—what a place it was! Buck, have you ever stood and let a six foot of a man lash and lash at your head with six feet of pole with six pounds of steel at the end? Because, when you have had that experience, as Walt Whitman says, 'you re-examine philosophies and religions.'"
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