THE CHEM AW A
AM ERICAN
19
1
I
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F O R S U R G IC A L U S E
J. J. Hill, the railway magnate, was attending a
banquet, when stories were called for. Mr. Hill
responded with a railway yarn.
“ When sleeping cars first came in,” he said, “ the
bed-clothes in the berths were very scanty. On one
of these early cars one night, after everybody had
turned in and the lights were low, a loud voice called
from one of the upper berths:
‘Porter, get a corkscrew?”
“ ‘The porter came hurrying along.
‘Boss,’ he said in a scandalized tone, ‘we don’t
allow no drinking in the berth. Against the rules.’
“ ‘O, it ain’t that porter,’ the voice answered. ‘I
just want to dig out a pillow that’s sort of worked its
way into my ear.’ ”
O * T IIE F I E L D O F H O N O R
The French paper Cri de Paris relates the following
pathetic and yet amusing war anecdote. In a field in
the department of the Aisne, where the English were
beaten in September, 1914, some of the French sol
diers discovered two isolated mounds covered over
with grass and surmounted by wooden crosses, one of
which bore the word “ Tin” and the other the word
“ Rubbish.”
Greatly affected, the soldiers gathered flowers, of
which they made bouquets, which they piously placed
upon the mounds, supposing them to be graves.
Then, with a trembling hand, they wrote on the
crosses this inscription: “ Dead on the Field of Hon
or!” There the inscriptions remained until one day,
when an officer, who understood English had the sod
broken open and discovered in one of the mounds
many empty cans and in the other a lot of worn-out
clothing and other refuse.
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