And if there be an end to it, let it be this, that I was more or less a man.
In the spring of your youth you were one who ran often to the many women of Paris, but now the good wine and the late light of the sun on the Plaza Del Toros must be enough for you.
It is good to sit at the bar with one’s feet on the bright brass rail while the old hunters lie their lies about the snow leopards of Kilimanjaro.
There may be as many as 200 fragments of shrapnel in you, but it is as nothing compared to the bone spur of the great DiMaggio.
As the gangrene in your leg worsens and the seaplane seems that it will never arrive, do not rob your death of nobility by selfishly clinging to Catherine’s keening pity.
You shall never be as close to a friend as the friends who shared your foxhole and your cigarettes and on good days your sherry and then one day died in the war.
In Michigan the spring is late but sudden and the quicksilver trout will hit the hook with strength enough to break your heart and you can almost forget that she did not love you, she never had.
When you feel you must cry for the love of your woman, take her to the pictures and then, without warning, seize her and kiss her by the machine for the making of the popcorn.
There will come one last perfect day, a day when the laughter flows like wine or tears, and after this perfect day there will be nothing for you but the gritty embrace of the grave.
As you wheel smartly down the Rue des Artistes in the gin-bright air of a new spring, you will know in blood and bone that it is a fine thing to be an ambulance driver, a fine thing.
With your friends betrayed by a woman and your soul betrayed by greed, you will seek to bury your sword-cane in a priest’s black heart.
Then come the days of leaden sky and no breath of wind, and your native bearers sigh, “There is no weather today. Today we drink, sir.”
