My! How they
used to bring us pies in them times and boxes of see-gars--and
flowers! Flowers to burn! Well I remember a Wisconsin regiment
marching along Market Street, big splendid men from the up-North
woods, every one of them with a Calla lily stuck in his gun! Oh,
it was fine, with the troops pouring in, and the whole city afire
to receive them, and the girls almost cutting the clothes off your
back for souvenirs--and it made Benny sick to see it all, him
clerking in a hardware store and eating his heart out to go with
the boys. He hung back as long as he could, but at last he
couldn't stand it no longer, and the day before we sailed he went
and enlisted in my battery.
He knew there was going to be a rumpus at home and I suppose that
was why he put it off to the very end, not wanting to be plagued
to death or cried over. But when he got into his uniform and had
done a spell of goose-step with the first sergeant, he was so
blamed rattled about going home that he had to take me along too.
He lived away off somewheres in a poorish sort of neighbourhood,
all little frame houses and little front yards about that big,
where you could see commuters watering Calla lilies in their city
clothes. Benny's house seemed the smallest and poorest of the lot,
though it had Calla lilies too and other sorts of flowers, and a
mat with "welcome" on it, and some kind of a dog that licked our
hands as we walked up the front steps and answered to the name of
Dook.
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