The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me | Page 2

through business
where we still find it easy to sign, possible to float and hard to pay a
ninety-day note, and through two country towns; one somewhat less
than one hundred thousand population, and Emporia slightly above ten
thousand.
We are discovered in the prologue to the play in New York City
wearing our new silk suits to give New York a treat on a hot August
day. Not that we or any one else ever wears silk suits in any Wichita or
Emporia; silk suits are bought by Wichita people and Emporians ail
over the earth to paralyse the natives of the various New Yorks.
In our pockets we hold commissions from the American Red Cross.
These commissions are sending us to Europe as inspectors with a view
to publicity later, one to speak for the Red Cross, the other to write for
it in America. We have been told by the Red Cross authorities in
Washington that we shall go immediately to the front in France and that
it will be necessary to have the protective colouring of some kind of an
army uniform. The curtain rises on a store in 43rd Street in New
York--perhaps the "Palace" or the "Hub" or the "Model" or the "Army
and Navy," where a young man is trying to sell us a khaki coat, and

shirt and trousers for $17.48. And at that it seems a lot of money to pay
for a rig which can be worn at most only two months. But we
compromise by making him throw in another shirt and a service hat and
we take the lot for $17.93 and go away holding in low esteem the
"pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war" as exemplified by
these military duds. In our hearts as we go off at R. U. E. will be seen a
hatred for uniforms as such, and particularly for phoney uniforms that
mean nothing and cost $18.00 in particular.
[Illustration with caption: And at that it seems a lot of money to pay for
a rig which can be worn at most only two months]
And then, with a quick curtain, the good ship Espagne, a French liner,
is discovered in New York harbour the next day with Henry and me
aboard her, trying to distinguish as she crawfishes out of the dock, the
faces of our waving friends from the group upon the pier.
The good ship Espagne is all steamed up and scooting through the night,
with two or three hundred others of the cast of characters aboard; and
there is Europe and the war in the cast of characters, and the Boche,
and Fritzie and the Hun, that diabolic trinity of evil, and just back of the
boat on the scenery of the first act, splattered like guinea freckles all
over the American map for three thousand miles north, south, east and
west, are a thousand replicas of Wichita and Emporia. So it really is not
of arms and the man that this story is written, nor of Henry and me, and
the war; but it is the eternal Wichita and Emporia in the American heart
that we shall celebrate hereinafter as we unfold our tale. Of course, that
makes it provincial. And people living in New York or Boston, or
Philadelphia (but not Chicago, for half of the people there have just
come to town and the other half is just ready to leave town) may not
understand this story. For in some respects New York is larger than
Wichita and Emporia; but not so much larger; for mere numbers of
population amount to little. There is always an angle of the particular
from which one can see it as a part of the universal; and seen properly
the finite is always infinite. And that brings us back naturally to Henry
and me, looking out at the scurrying stars in the ocean as we hurried
through the black night on the good ship Espagne. We had just folded

away a fine Sunday dinner, a French Sunday dinner, beginning with
onion soup which was strange; and as ominous of our journey into the
Latin world as a blast of trumpets opening a Wagnerian overture.
Indeed that onion soup was threaded through our whole trip like a motif.
Our dinner that night ended in cheese and everything. It was our first
meal aboard the boat. During two or three courses, we had considered
the value of food as a two-way commodity--going down and coming
up--but later in the dinner we ordered our food on its merits as a
one-way luxury, with small thought as to its other uses. So we leaned
against the rail in the night and thought large thoughts about Wichita
and Emporia.
Here we were, two middle-aged men, nearing