The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1920-02-19
ON BEING A FELLOW GUEST
OF PERSHING'S
By w. G.. Patrick .

from Detroit; Abe kOhn with his last
word in ladies' ready-to-wear from
New York; the suave oil promoter
from the southwest with his we'll
dressed person upholstered with fas-
cinating stock certificates. a draWl in
his voice, cast in one eye, and a
manner far smoother than the Oil
which his high-class properties sell
dom, if ever, produce; the rich, ro-
tund and retired Mississippi Delta
cotton planter whose chief object in
life now is to be known as citizen
of Memphis and a permanent guest
of the Chisca hotel; to say nothing
of the flock of small fry grocery
drummers whose purpose in life is to
make home by Friday night or Sat-
urday noon, take the weekly 'bawl-
ing out" from the boss, get good,
hot bath and a little rest and renew
contact with civilization for few
hours-they all have an abundance
Of curiosity.
On Saturday the Commercial Ap-
peal heralded his coming on Sunday
and accounted for every hour of his
short visit in detail, but aside from
a characteristic remark or two from
an ex-doughboy here and there, care
fully deferred until assured of his
freedom from the despised saluting
and making it 'snappy" every
shave-tail among the seemingly
countless horde, there was not a rip
pie of excitement to indicate that on
the morrow John Joseph Pershing,
commanding general of the armies
Of the United States, would honor
Memphis with, his presence.
Contrary, however, to the usual
Sunday morning custom of hotel
guests, there were few late sleepers
and the breakfast room at the CHS
ca was well filled at a tolerably early
hour with guests who quite frankly
gave the double o" to the morning
paper whose front page displayed a
good sized picture of General PERISH
ing alongside a column and more of
details of the days programme. l
read it from force of habit and with
hardly more than passing interest un
til out from the printed page leaped
the words will lunch today at the
Chisca hotel" Funny, isn't it, how
a few little words like that can
arouse a personal interest, or, am 1
curious, too? At any rate, I soon
knew that I was getting excited and
what's more others seemed to have
contracted the same malady, even
though all of us tried strenuously
to suppress the symptoms. What
was a general any way, couldn't a
fellow hop over the Mexican border
a few miles and find every third male
inhabitant wearing that rank as nat
urally as he wore his sombrero?
Sure" said wise one from the mid
die west, "I've seen that bird many
a time" But I noticed that he did
not lock himself in his room when the
hour scheduled for lunch: approached.
To one without knowledge of the
impending occasion there would have
been little in the appearance of the
rather numerous lobby-loungers who
comfortably filled the hotels commo-
duious lobby and occupied all the
available chairs, unless it might have
been the tenacity with which they
clung to seats likely to be points of
vantage, until along about noon there
appeared fussy little bald headed,
bow-legged individual with mouth
of such comfortable SIZE it was not
hard to see that it had been design
ed in the good old days of the full
dinner pail. His appearance on the
scene, accompanied by the clearing
away of all distractions in fairly
good sized, quadrangular space close
to the niche into which I had fitted
my person, and the marshalling of
numerosu chairs into irregular
groups which refilled the aching volu,
seemed to be the cue for letting
down of all restraint and general
buzz of conversation Immediately in
dicated the first sign of relief from
the strain The chairs, it came out
pretty soon, were to seat the local
musicians the most Of whom, it
seemed, had come to blow General
Pershing to a good time, and after
the customary jockey'ng for position
by these embryo Arthur Pryors aud
John Phillip Sousas, the crashing of
the band into a patriotic air disclos-
ed the fat that my friend of the
generous mouth in laboring manfully
o1,or tbo hose dunn was on6eaVOr n O