He called the whole company together and made the situation clear to them. Then he asked for twenty volunteers to advance one pace. He loved his men, and it was almost more than he could bear. He closed his eyes to keep back his tears, and when he opened them the men stood in exactly the same formation. He was pained.
A sergeant stepped forward at salute. “Every one has advanced one pace, sir,” he said.
The young subaltern, who was a son of a general and never omitted to rub in that fact, was taking a message from the general to the gunners.
“If you please,” he said to the major, “father says will you move your guns.” The major was in an irate mood. “Oh!” he rejoined, “and what the blazes does your mother say?”
Kerensky kissed Arthur Henderson, the British labor politician, as the American Labor Mission calls him, and all England gasped. Kerensky is coming to this country. He may want to kiss Secretary Wilson or even President Wilson. This has led an anonymous poet to suggest that the President put his greetings into a song, and to furnish him with the song, as follows:
“Salute me only with thy fist, And don’t attempt to buss me; The very thought of being kissed Is quite enough to fuss me. If you must kiss, try it on Gompers— He hasn’t been kissed since he wore rompers.”
The more things the draft officials do to baseball here the better it flourishes in London, according to Richard Hatteras, of that thriving community, who was recently in New York. Mr. Hatteras says the game is getting a firm hold on every nationality in the British capital.
“Why, recently,” quoth he, “I saw a game in which East Indians were playing. One of these approached the plate at a crucial moment and cried aloud:
“‘Allah, give thou me strength to make a hit.’
“The next man up was an Irishman. He spat on the plate, made faces at the pitcher, and yelled:
An American boy had his first experience in the first line of trenches under fire, and an American woman met him.
“Well, boy,” asked the woman, “what was it like? Pretty awful experience, wasn’t it?”
“Awful?” grinned the Sammee. “Funniest thing you ever saw.”
“Funny?” echoed the woman, amazed. “Why, what in the world do you mean?”
“Those beans! Why——” and he went off into a gale of laughter. “Of course you don’t know. But cook had made an enormous pot of beans for the boys and, say, they did smell some good. But they were too hot and so cook put them on the edge of the trench to cool off. Just then the Germans let go some shells and one hit that pot square. And it didn’t do anything to those beans. Honestly, ma’am, it simply rained beans for an hour!”