The Glory of the Coming by Irvin S. Cobb

THERE was a transportload of newly made officers coming over for service here in France. There was on board one gentleman in uniform who bore himself, as the saying goes, with an air. By reason of that air and by reason of a certain intangible atmospheric something about him difficult to define in words he seemed intent upon establishing himself upon a plane far remote from and inaccessible to these fellow voyagers of his who were crossing the sea to serve in the line, or to act as interpreters, or to go on staffs, or to work with the Red Cross or the Y. M. C. A. or the K. of C. or what not. He had what is called the superior manner, if you get what I mean -- and you should get what I mean, reader, if ever you had lived, as I have, for a period of years hard by and adjacent to that particular stretch of the eastern seaboard of North America where, as nowhere else along the Atlantic Ocean or in the interior, are to be found in numbers those favoured beings who acquire merit unutterable by belonging to, or by being distantly related to, or by being socially acquainted with, the families that have nothing but.

Nevertheless, and to the contrary notwithstanding, divers of his brother travellers failed to keep their distance. Toward this distinguished gentleman they deported themselves with a familiarity and an offhandedness that must have been acutely distasteful to one unaccustomed to moving in a mixed and miscellaneous company.