Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-09-21

ton that it might soon become Hell
and repeat.
They did not know that down the
road q piece they were going TO get
chummy with lot of strangers,
among them the following;
Draft
Nonexemption
Reveille
Hikes
Gas masks
Transports
Front line
Shellholes
Shrapnel
Water wagon
Khaki
Mess kits
Rife pits
Trenches
France
Ambulauces
Base hospitals
Y. NJ. G. A.
When a clean haymow begins to
look like the imperial suite at the
Ritz, and mammals pet, accustomed
to making a complete change every
n. m, becomes merely a swell sum-
mer resort for cooties, good many
opinions become reversed and previ-
Gus misconceptions are knocked GAL
ley west.
Borrowing, for a moment, the
chaste vocabulary of the book re-
viewer, it is a far cry from an over
heated lobster parlor in the home
town to lonesome roadway in per-
secuted France.
There are no white lights to guide
the night hawk and no slave in but
tons to summon taxi.
af hard look at the
sergeant who is dragging his way
into a battered village, carrying "a
tons of equipm ent.
The entire German army has been
blazing away at him for three days,
but that is all in the past tense.
He has cnly one large thought
pulsating in the bean at present, and
that is to follow a trail leading to a
warm fire and a scuttle of United
States coffee.
Scrape away the mud and you Will
find underneath our old friend Wen
dell.
He has shed the pale silk hose
with the clocks on the ankles, and
the glove-fitting coat with only one
button. and the dinky little butter
fly bow.
Also, he has shaken off the bind
ing shackles of error and prejudice
and probably is one of the most fair
minded young fellows to be found
anywhere.
Here is a mpish-looking boy
who is all through having fun with
the G. A. r.
1t seems to him. that forty-fve
years back in the past a rathskeller
rodent bearing a name somewhat
similar to his own had sat round in
ri In
himself
For that which we give up, we ac-
quire something else.
Wendell had lost the regalia which
you see the SLENDER sad-eyed hound
wearing in the advertising section
of an illustrated weekly, but he had
been given a suit of working clothes
by his indulgent uncle, and, even in
his smeared-up condition, he looked
more of a man.
Likewise, since having the cock
sure opinions kicked out of him, he
had stored the cavity with a lot of
hard and useful facts.
He could not remember just how
or when he got shut of his enormous
reserve supply of snobbishness, but
he always suspected that he sweat it
out on the first forced march.
He is now a regular ging, even IL
he isn't much to look at.
Ahead of him in the smudgy gloom
is a dull glow.
He and the other buddies are pain
fully plodding toward the hut.
What do you mean-hut?
Why, the "Y," to be sure. In 9TH
er words, the improvised hangout Of
the Y. NJ. 9. A.
Is it possible that our young patri-
Il hn
prince of the brownstone section, has
forgotten so soon that only the
swobs and l:zzies go in for early
piety.
Yes; they got the poor lad at a
disadvantage and trapped him.
They pushed him away out toward
the front among the barbed-wire
entanglements and the ruined viii
lages and the gas attacks and other
nonattractive incidents.
They worked on him until he was
blue and homesick and possibly lit
tie cold between the knees.
They waited until he was simply
honing and yearning for warmth and
light and cheer and music and COM
panionship and entertainment and
something different in the way of
chow.
Then. having him on the hip, as it
were, they let him know that he
could not get the things he craved ex-
cept by compromising all of his
sturdy convictions and going back
to slavery days. when he attended
Sunday school.
He was having a lot cf new ones
handed to him-but of all the Jolts!
A real high-roller doing a sneak
entrance into the Y. NJ. c. A!
He couldn't stand outside when the
whole gang was inside, showing the
piano how to take a joke.
Two things he dreaded when he
nerved himself and walked through
the doorway.
One was meeting the secretary
and the other was leading in prayer
But he would have preached a
short sermon in order to get a plate
of ham and eggs.
To his intense relief, he was not
called upon to invoke.
He and the secretary had been pals
for twenty minutes and were rag
timing together and everything was
Jake before he identified the live
wire as the main squeeze.
1t took world war to get Wen
dell acquainted with the "Y."
AS soon as he found out that the
secretary had no Spanish moss on
the jowls and did not address him
as brother" he began to acknowl-
edge that possibly he had failed to
call the turn on the Y. NJ. c. A.
He always had supposed that one
would walt in the anteroom to be
baptized before entering the. dim;y
lighted sanctuary.
He expected to be loaded up with
religion. but instead he receiyed