Last Words
Copyright© 2025 by Stephen Crane
The Victory of the Moon.
The Strong Man of the Hills lost his wife. Immediately he went abroad, calling aloud. The people all crouched afar in the dark of their huts, and cried to him when he was yet a long distance away: “No, no, great chief, we have not even seen the imprint of your wife’s sandal in the sand. If we had seen it, you would have found us bowed down in worship before the marks of her ten glorious brown toes, for we are but poor devils of Indians, and the grandeur of the sun rays on her hair would have turned our eyes to dust.”
“Her toes are not brown. They are pink,” said the Strong Man from the Hills. “Therefore do I believe that you speak the truth when you say you have not seen her, good little men of the valley. In this matter of her great loveliness, however, you speak a little too strongly. As she is no longer among my possessions, I have no mind to hear her praised. Whereabouts is the best man of you?”
None of them had stomach for this honour at the time. They surmised that the Strong Man of the Hills had some plan for combat, and they knew that the best of them would have in this encounter only the strength of the meat in the grip of the fire. “Great King,” they said, in one voice, “there is no best man here.”
“How is this?” roared the Strong Man. “There must be one who excels. It is a law. Let him step forward then.”
But they solemnly shook their heads. “There is no best man here.”
The Strong Man turned upon them so furiously that many fell to the ground. “There must be one. Let him step forward.” Shivering, they huddled together and tried, in their fear, to thrust each other toward the Strong Man.
At this time a young philosopher approached the throng slowly. The philosophers of that age were all young men in the full heat of life. The old greybeards were, for the most part, very stupid, and were so accounted.
“Strong Man from the Hills,” said the young philosopher, “go to yonder brook and bathe. Then come and eat of this fruit. Then gaze for a time at the blue sky and the green earth. Afterward I have something to say to you.”
“You are not so wise that I am obliged to bathe before listening to you?” demanded the Strong Man, insolently.
“No,” said the young philosopher. All the people thought this reply very strange.
“Why, then, must I bathe and eat of fruit and gaze at the earth and the sky?”
“Because they are pleasant things to do.”
“Have I, do you think, any thirst at this time for pleasant things?”
“Bathe, eat, gaze,” said the young philosopher with a gesture.
The Strong Man did, indeed, whirl his bronzed and terrible limbs in the silver water. Then he lay in the shadow of a tree and ate the cool fruit and gazed at the sky and the earth. “This is a fine comfort,” he said. After a time he suddenly struck his forehead with his finger. “By the way, did I tell you that my wife had fled from me?”
“I know it,” said the young philosopher.
Later the Strong Man slept peacefully. The young philosopher smiled.
But in the night the little men of the valley came clamouring: “Oh, Strong Man of the Hills, the moon derides you!”
The philosopher went to them in the darkness. “Be still, little people. It is nothing. The derision of the moon is nothing.”
But the little men of the valley would not cease their uproar. “Oh, Strong Man! Strong Man, awake! Awake! The moon derides you!”
Then the Strong Man aroused and shook his locks away from his eyes. “What is it, good little men of the valley?”