Fighting, in fact, had been one of his
earliest accomplishments, and he prided himself upon knowing as
much about it as any one man could learn. He believed in fighting
both as a principle and as an exercise; in fact, he attributed his
good health to his various neighborly "unpleasantnesses," and he
had more than once argued that no great fighter ever died of a
sluggish liver or of any one of the other ills that beset
sedentary, peace-loving people. Nations were like men--too much
ease made them flabby. And Blaze had his own ideas of strategy,
too. So during the perusal of his paper he bemoaned the mistakes
his government was making. Why waste time with ultimatums? he
argued to himself. He had never done so. Experience had taught him
that the way to win a battle was to beat the other fellow to the
draw; hence this diplomatic procrastination filled him with
impatience. It seemed almost treasonable to one of Blaze's intense
patriotism.
He was engaged in laying out a plan of campaign for the United
States when he became conscious of voices behind him, and realized
that for some time Paloma had been entertaining a caller in the
front room.
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