They were healthy, smooth-skinned, clear-eyed, and they were young--youths like me, learning the way of their feet in the world of men.

And they WERE men.

No mild saki for them, but square faces illicitly refilled with corrosive fire that flamed through their veins and burst into conflagrations in their heads.

I remember a melting song they sang, the refrain of which was: "'Tis but a little golden ring, I give it to thee with pride, Wear it for your mother's sake When you are on the tide." They wept over it as they sang it, the graceless young scamps who had all broken their mothers' prides, and I sang with them, and wept with them, and luxuriated in the pathos and the tragedy of it, and struggled to make glimmering inebriated generalisations on life and romance.

And one last picture I have, standing out very clear and bright in the midst of vagueness before and blackness afterward.