It was during the nerve racking period of waiting for the signal to attack that a seasoned old sergeant noticed a young soldier fresh from home visibly affected by the nearness of the coming fight. His face was pale, his teeth chattered, and his knees tried to touch each other. It was sheer nervousness, but the sergeant thought it was sheer funk.
“Tompkins,” he said, “is it trembling you are for your skin?”
“No, no, sergeant,” said he, making a brave attempt to still his limbs. “I’m trembling for the Germans—they don’t know I’m here.”
NO LEAD PIPE CINCH
“Conscription has, maybe, saved the country,” growled the soldier, “but what I object to is the company it drives a man into. I’m a plumber by trade, an honest workman, yet I’m compelled to suffer the society of such professionals as a lawyer, a minister, and an auctioneer.”
“Not a bad selection, Jock,” remarked his friend.
“O, maybe no in a way; but when the minister and the lawyer start an argument on Egyptian law in the middle o’ the nicht across half a dozen beds, wi’ the blessed auctioneer as umpire, what chance has even a plumber of stopping the gas leak?”
SERVED HIM RIGHT!
A professor at Princeton who has taken much interest in the woman suffrage movement was persuaded to carry a banner in a wartime parade held in Washington.
His wife observed him marching with a dejected air and carrying his banner so that it hung limply on its standard, and later she reproved him for not making a better appearance.