A Private in the Guards Author:Stephen Graham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN One of the curious pleasures of being stationed in London is the luxurious leisurely first hour at home when, duty being done, I h... more »asten across the Park to the old familiar rooms where so many pages have been written and so many bright faces seen. Now I cannot entertain friends as of yore, and Time, who was always with me, has become against me. But it is possible to sit in the old arm-chair and look lovingly at familiar panels and the pictures with which I have lived. Still the luxury is not so much in the time of chair repose as in an inevitable procedure which has become my grace before freedom—the procedure of washing off the barracks. Indeed a taste for living and being which I had not expected expresses itself in the divesting of puttees and the putting off of heavy boots, the peaceful shave in warm water—such a contrast to the hurried shave in the dark with hard cold water at reveille, the washing of close-clipped head so full inwardly of beautiful impressions, yet forced to lie on pillows where dirty heads innumerable have lain before, the warm bath, taking away the poison of the barrack-room night that clogs into the pores, the seven- times washed fingers which have gone a shabby grey with the dirty work of washing floors and windows, cleaning equipment and rifle, the change into fresh white linen, the dab of eau-de-cologne to cheeks and throat, the few drops of perfume to take away, if possible, the barracks smell. All that belongs to the process of washing away the barracks, putting it away from me, and making me fit to come into the presence of friends. It is deep ingrained, however. The iron of it has entered the soul. How much there is that cannot be washed away by these means! Dirt has come not only to the body but to the other mo...« less