The instruments were quiet, a good Thanksgiving dinner
had been enjoyed and now the smoke from his old "T. D." pipe curled in
graceful rings around his red head.
Denny was a smashing good operator and some eighteen months before he
had landed in St. Louis dead broke. All the offices and railroads were
full and nary a place did he get. While walking up Pine street one
morning his eye fell foul of a sign:--
"Wanted, able-bodied, unmarried men, between the ages of twenty-one and
thirty-five, for service in the United States Army."
In his mind's eye he sized himself up and came to the conclusion that he
would fill all the requirements. Now, he hadn't any great hankering for
soldiering, but he didn't have a copper to his name and as empty
stomachs stand not on ceremony, in he went and after being catechized by
the recruiting sergeant, he was pounded for thirty minutes by the
examining surgeon, pronounced as sound as a dollar, and then sworn in
"to serve Uncle Sam honestly and faithfully for five years. So help me
God." The space of time necessary to transform a man from a civilian to
a soldier is of a very short duration, and almost before he knew it he
was dressed in the plain blue of the soldier of the Republic.
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