“Don’ yo’ go an’ get fresh with me, nigger!” said Joseph, in a warning voice.
“Yakki-wakki-hikki-doolah!” growled the other—or words to that effect.
Joseph lost all patience. His voice suddenly shot up an octave higher, and he screamed:
“You ain’t no nigger at all! You’re only a Af’ican!”
Possibly it was in self-compensation for this disillusioning encounter that Joseph promptly mailed to his affianced in distant Lebanon, Illinois, the letter which has been mentioned above. It began:
Well, honey, we has arrived in France, and this war sure is fierce. Every time I steps outside my dugout I wades up to my knees in blood.…
CHAPTER NINE
THE EXILES
So tremendous was America’s response when in the spring of this year the call came to her from the Western Front to hurry, so overwhelming the host which she sent over, that our chief difficulty to-day is not to withstand the Hun, but to find a vacant spot on his carcass to hit.