When General Neville, the hero of the defense of Verdun, made his tour of America he was the guest of honor at a big public reception in one of the Los Angeles hotels. Among those invited to greet the distinguished visitor were the more prominent members of the moving-picture colony.
At the doors of General Neville’s suite Will Rogers met Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin, who in private life is a reserved and rather shy little man, was considerably fussed up over the prospect ahead of him.
“I suppose we’re expected to say a few words to the General,” he confided to Rogers. “But for the life of me I can’t think of the best way to start the conversation.”
Rogers gave to the problem a moment of earnest consideration.
“Well,” he said, “you might ask him if he was in the war, and which side he was on.”
§ 14 What Aunt Myra Desired
They brought a darky out of the jail in a North Carolina town with intent to hang him for murder. This was in the day when capital punishment was publicly inflicted. As a special mark of attention the widow of the murderer’s victim was permitted to witness the event from a position of vantage directly facing the gallows. She had had a sort of small grandstand rigged up and she had decorated it with bunting, and when the march to the scaffold started, there she sat in a white mother-hubbard wrapper, gently agitating a palmleaf fan, flanked and surrounded by relatives, invited friends and sister members of her lodge.
When the condemned had been properly trussed up, with the noose dangling about his neck, the sheriff, holding the black cap in his hand, edged up to him and said:
“Well, Jim, we’re about ready. If you’ve got anything to say, I reckon this would be a mighty good time to say it.”
“Yas, suh,” said the doomed, “I has got sump’n to say. I jest wants to say dat I is fully repented fur whut I done. I taken it to de Lawd in prayer an’ I knows it’s all right wid Him. I ast de jedge w’ich tried me an’ de persecutin’ attorney an’ de foreman of de jury ef they bore me any gredge, w’ich, one an’ all, they said they did not. An’ now I kin go right straight to Hebben an’ nestle in de bosom of Father Abraham ef only I kin git de fergiveness of dat nigger lady sittin’ yonder—de wife of de man I kil’t.”