It was the first sketch, as it
were, of "The Soldiers' Rest". I only wish I had been able to write it
as I conceived it. The tale as it stands is, I think, a far better
piece of craft than "The Bowmen", but the tale that came to me as the
blue incense floated above the Gospel Book on the desk between the
tapers: that indeed was a noble story--like all the stories that never
get written. I conceived the dead men coming up through the flames and
in the flames, and being welcomed in the Eternal Tavern with songs and
flowing cups and everlasting mirth. But every man is the child of his
age, however much he may hate it; and our popular religion has long
determined that jollity is wicked. As far as I can make out modern
Protestantism believes that Heaven is something like Evensong in an
English cathedral, the service by Stainer and the Dean preaching. For
those opposed to dogma of any kind--even the mildest--I suppose it is
held that a Course of Ethical Lectures will be arranged.
Well, I have long maintained that on the whole the average church,
considered as a house of preaching, is a much more poisonous place
than the average tavern; still, as I say, one's age masters one, and
clouds and bewilders the intelligence, and the real story of "The
Soldiers' Rest", with its "sonus epulantium in aeterno convivio", was
ruined at the moment of its birth, and it was some time later that the
actual story got written.
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