#427 An Inch and a Half of Glory- Dashiell Hammett
The building was on fire, and everyone stood outside waiting
for the fire trucks. It wasn’t a huge fire. Earl Parish saw a boys face appear
in a window above the fire. He didn’t look scared, but Parish after much
thought decided to go into the building before the fire trucks arrived to bring
to boy out.
Although never in danger, the act was heroic and his name
appeared in the papers the next day as saving the child from the fire. The
notice was an inch and a half. He humbly accepted praise the next day and life
went on.
“There had been nothing heroic—about his going into the
smoking building: he had brought the child down not as one would snatch it from
peril, but as one would protect it from awareness of peril. Nevertheless, it
was pleasant to lie across his bed knowing that people throughout the city had
read of what he had done, that his acquaintances thought him a man of courage.”
With time, people forgot about the act and his courage not
spoken of often. This caused him resentment, it had become the most important
part of his life. When people forget the defining part of your life, you feel
you have no definition. He longed for more recognition and it ruined his life.
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