The
picture of a simple and untried youth becoming through the needs of his
country part of a great fighting machine was presented with an
earnestness of purpose, a sense of tragic issues, and an imaginative
force of expression which struck me as quite uncommon and altogether
worthy of admiration.
Apparently Stephen Crane had received a favourable impression from the
reading of the _Nigger of the Narcissus_, a book of mine which had also
been published lately. I was truly pleased to hear this.
On my next visit to town we met at a lunch. I saw a young man of medium
stature and slender build, with very steady, penetrating blue eyes, the
eyes of a being who not only sees visions but can brood over them to some
purpose.
He had indeed a wonderful power of vision, which he applied to the things
of this earth and of our mortal humanity with a penetrating force that
seemed to reach, within life's appearances and forms, the very spirit of
life's truth. His ignorance of the world at large--he had seen very
little of it--did not stand in the way of his imaginative grasp of facts,
events, and picturesque men.
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