Captain Jinks, Hero

1902
Registered at Stationers' Hall, London
Printed in the United States
Published February, 1902


LESS my soul! I nearly forgot, exclaimed Colonel Jinks, as he came back into the store. To-morrow is Sam's birthday and I promised Ma to bring him home something for a present. Have you got anything for a boy six years old?
Let me see, answered the young woman behind the counter, turning round and looking at an upper shelf. Why, yes; there's just the thing. It's a box of lead soldiers. I've never seen anything like them before —and she reached up and pulled down a large card board box. Just see, she added as she opened it. The officers have swords that come off, and the guns come off the men's shoulders; and look at the——
Never mind, interrupted the colonel. I'm in a hurry. That'll do very well. How much is it?
And two minutes later he went out of the store with the box in his hand and got into his buggy, and was soon driving through the streets of Homeville on his way to his farm.
No one had ever asked Colonel Jinks where he had obtained his title. In fact, he had never put the question to himself. It was an integral part of his person, and as little open to challenge as his hand or his foot. There are favored regions of the world's surface where colonels, like poets, are born, not made, and good fortune had placed the colonel's birthplace in one of them. For the benefit of those of my readers who may be prejudiced against war, and in justice to the colonel, it should be stated that the only military thing about him was his title. He was a mild-man nered man with a long thin black beard and a slight stoop, and his experience with fire-arms was confined to the occasional shooting of depredatory crows, squirrels, and rats with an ancient fowling-piece. Still there is magic in a name. And who knows but that the subtle influence of the title of colonel may have unconsciously guided the searching eyes of the young saleswoman among the Noah's arks and farmyards to the box of lead soldiers?