The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-05-06
fcleveland Plain Dealer.l

in the uniforms of their superior Off
GERS.
A private in the marine corps on duty
at the Boston navy yard got hold of
suitcase containing the full dress uni
form and overcoat of a captain. Being
imaginative and a bit reckless under
the stimulus of payday red-eye. he
got into the captains gear and had a
great time of it until, running up
against Boston policeman, he was
arrested and exposed
private Of the doughboy outfit sta
toned at Fort Logan, Denver, took an
even higher rank upon himself for a
little while. dressing himself up in his
colonels clothes. He got into a fight
with the conductor and motorman of
Denver trolley car and that ruined
him. He was grabbed by the police.
and the cat was out
TheSe things are happening right
along. The fellows who do such things
merely indulge a spirit of daredeviltry,
though they are severely punished, as
rule, when they are caught, particu-
larly if, as usually happens, they have
messed up the filched uniforms a whole
lot
Once there was a private in the artil-
lery branch of the American army who
inVoluntarily posed in San Francisco,
and at no less a place than the famed
bohemian club, as lieutenant in the
British navy. This man was Chappie
Holmes, young Englishman of cher
ished memory.
Plenty of men in New York today re-
member him. He Joined the Astor bat
terry upon the breaking out of the Span
ism war and was killed in the first &C
| ton into which the battery went in the
Philippines, alongside of Dinny Grim
minis, who had been a sergeant with
the Chappie in the Fifth United States
artillery at Alcatraz island in San
Francisco harbor
Holmes was the youngest son of a
good English family and he came out
To the states in 1898. He had little
money, but soon went broke in New
York. Then he hunted for work as an
actor.
He caught on with a snap fiy-by-
night BOX and Cox theatrical outfit
| that started out on tour of New Eng
land and Canada The outfit went to
smash in Montreal. Here Holmes got
work as understudy for the leading
man in stock company and put in
several months.
The bottom fell out of the stock com
pany and Holmes, DESTROYS of looking
the country over, drifted out to San
Francisco. The years 1893 and 1894
were mighty lean ones in San Francis
co. There We're men wearing silk hats
and silken hosiery working on the
streets for tickets emitting them to eat
at municipal soup houses. Holmes
couldn't see this end OF it, so he enlist
ed as private in c battery of the
Fifth artillery, stationed on 1.-The rock
l-Alcatraz island. that is the gloomy
seven-acre bowlder that confronts,
sentinel wise, the Golden Gate
1t was here that he gained the
! 'Chappie' nickname. which chung to
him for the balance of his life. He was
a powerfully built, rather un-Engiish
| looking man of % or SC, but his Eng
fish pronunciation was as broad as that
of Lawrence D'Orsay. He was a rip
ping pianist and on Sunday afternoons
he played the organ in the chapel of
the military prison at AlcatraZ. He
was a pretty earnest hand at the can
teen, which still existed at that time,
and when he went to San Francisco
on leave at gay time he took the game
as it came.
| It was on one Of these payday visits
to the city that "Chappie" gained the
applause of the Bohemian club.
| He had hardly stepped off the gov
eminent tug, the General Mcdowell,
at the Clay street wharf, when he saw
a big bunch Of American and British
Il
Al Whites waterfront groggery. IT
| looked good to the Chappie, and he
took the right end OF it, as became the
uniform he was wearing.
! He was a topnotch boxer and a good
rough and tumble fighter in a pinch.
| When the two parties of men-o'-war's
men drew apart all hands looked sadly
messed up. but the Chappie was the
worst of the lot. His uniform, the best
/ hoah 10 in tot Il
with waterfront mud
| Now, Holmes had all of Sc in his
clothes and he didn't want to lose his
twelve hours leave of absence. He
| couldn't afford to buy suit of clothes
out of his Sc. and he needed the
money, anyhow. So he thought of a
scheme.
! When circumstances let him into
Uncle Sans army he left a trunk be-
hind him at lodging house on Califor-
MIA street as security for S. a months
room rent due. Everything the trunk
contained had been locked except the
service uniform of a lieutenant in the
British navy.
| So. after the waterfront fight the
| Chappie went to his old landlady with
an installment of 50 in his hand, for
which he told her he desired to re-
move only the uniform from the
tfunk- Inc W looked pretty good to
the landlady-puTe velvet, in fact, for
she had never expected to see the
Chappie any more. So the Chappie
was permitted to ascend to the garrett
and don the uniform of the lieutenant
in the royal army.
] The Chappies idea was that he
would meet some swaddie from the
battery downtown and get him to
bike back to ''the rock" for a spare
uniform, which would enable him to re-
port back to duty looking Ike a de-
cent soldier. When he put on the
lieutenaDt's uniform and washed up
he looked the part of a spick and span
young officer of the British navy.
| The Chappie took a cable car and
was whirled down town. He dropped
off at the Palace hotel for drink
/ People turned about to gaze after the
/ lad. He was handsome and distin-
guished looking, and the uniform fit
ted him like a mold.
He was standing before the bar
| taking his drink when Albert Cheva-
| lier, the English coster singer, came
up and touched him upon the arm
| The uniform of the navy of his owr
country had filed Chevaliers eye,
and Chevalier felt impelled to shake
/ hands with the Chappie