The recruiting officer laid down his tools, pulled out a pipe, and sat down comfortably under a small sycamore tree at the roadside.
"Not so very easy," he replied, "but interesting and exciting." He paused for a minute to scrutinize the prospective recruit more closely. To his experienced eye the boy appeared desirable. Slouchy, dirty, and lazy-looking, perhaps; but there were nevertheless good muscles and a strong body under those ragged overalls. The corporal launched into his story.
For twenty minutes the boy listened open-mouthed to the stories of post life, where baseball, football, and boxing divided the time with drilling; of mess-halls where a fellow could eat all he wanted to, free; of good-fellowship and fraternal pride in the organization; of the pleasant evenings in the amusement rooms in quarters. And then of the life of the big world, of which the boy had only dreamed; of the Western plains, of Texas, the snowy ridges of the great Rockies, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, the Philippines, Hawaii, the strange glamour of the tropics, the great wildernesses of the frozen North.
"It seems 'most like as I'd like to join," was the timid venture.
"What's your name?"
"Steve Bishop."
"All right, Steve, come in and see me the next time you're in town," said the corporal, rising. "We'll talk it over."
And, mounting his motor cycle, he was gone down the road in a whirl of red dust. Nor did the farmer boy think to wonder at the sudden recovery of the apparently stalled machine.
"Missionary work," explains the corporal. "We never beg 'em to join; but we do sort of give 'em the idea. Like joinin' the Masons, you know," he winked, giving me the grip.
So it happened that Steve Bishop mounted the stairs that day, resolved to join the army if they would take him.