"Seven o'clock. Great excitement in Heaven. Deacon Jones has not arrived. The worst is feared."
"Cause if they don't, the milk and honey the preacher said was up there must be all canned stuff."
"Say, mama, was baby sent down from heaven?"
"Um. They like to have it quiet up there, don't they?"
"Something a father believes in until his son starts to act like a fool."
"So you won the Distinguished Service Cross for conspicuous bravery in extreme danger. Didn't you feel shaky?"
"Not until I lined up for the general to pin it on me."
The other day I met in the street a man in uniform. His coat sleeves were embroidered from shoulder to cuff with bars, stripes, insignia and chevrons of the most gorgeous colors and fantastic designs. My curiosity was too much for me, and I was about to stop and question him, when I discovered he had already halted and was bursting to tell me.
"Yes," he announced, "they are every one authorized by the War Department. These three octangular triangles of orange mean my third cousin did a good deal of war work. These ten vertical mauve stripes are ten embarkations; the ten horizontal stripes denote ten times sea-sick."
"Then you never reached France," I sympathized.
"No, but this gray dot indicates extreme disappointment. Now these pink crosses--"
But I hurried off, and almost ran into a limping soldier with only a small gold chevron on each arm. My curiosity again overcame me. "My boy, how came you by those?" I asked, feeling assured he could not say much about only two chevrons. He did not.
"Well," he answered as he passed, "I was abroad for a while, and I happened to kind of go a little lame."
Upon a wharf where the Yanks were disembarking a reporter buttonholed a rosy-cheeked private.
"Are you one of the heroes?" the newspaper man asked, with notebook ready to record a stirring tale of heroism.
"Naw," was the blushing reply. "I'm only a common doughboy. But the lieutenant, over there, is one."
To the officer indicated went the reporter.
"No," laughed the lieutenant. "I merely happened to be on the job when something needed to be done, and I did it. However, I can refer you to the simon-pure article." And he pointed out a sergeant with three wound stripes upon his sleeve.