THIS is the story of a conspiracy against Uncle Sam—a patriotic plot
to be sure, for it is concerned with the son of a Spanish War veteran
who was rejected for service in Uncle Sam’s Navy because he was seven
pounds shy of weight for height, the said son’s up-and-down dimension
being full six feet. It is a story of superfeeding conducted while the
young man was skillfully kept a prisoner—albeit a willing one, but just
to guard against his “jumping his feed”—by placing his nether garments
carefully under lock and key. The New York _Sun_ tells the tale and its
happy outcome. It happened in this way:
Young Walter Francis everlastingly did want to get into the Navy and
stop this _U_-boat nonsense once and for all. Wherefore last Saturday
bright and early Potential Admiral Francis took his bearings from
the compass he wears on his watch chain, yelled, “Ship ahoy!” to the
skipper of a passing Brooklyn trolley car, boarded a starboard seat
well aft in the car, and then set sail over the waves of Brooklyn
asphalt toward the recruiting plant of the Second Naval Battalion of
Brooklyn at the foot of Fifty-second street, Bay Ridge.
“Step on,” directed the examining surgeon to young Mr. Francis,
indicating the scales in his office. “Step off. Now step out—you’re
seven pounds shy for a six-footer.”
Half an hour later Walter Francis, dejected and forlorn, appeared
before his father.
“’Smatter, son?” inquired the Spanish War vet.
“’Smatter, pop! There’s seven pounds the matter! Uncle Sam can do
without me.”
Mrs. Francis came into the room and heard the depressing news of her
short-weight son, and straightway conspiracy stalked silently upon the
scene. Says the writer in the _Sun_:
A moment later a significant look passed between father and mother
above and back of the bowed head of their son. Mr. and Mrs. Francis
withdrew to the kitchen for a council of war. Then Spanish-American War
Veteran Joe Francis walked into the front room again and stood before
his underweight offspring.
“Take off our pants, Walter,” said Francis, senior, “And give me
your—don’t sit there staring at me; get busy—give me your shoes. Ma,
catch the boy’s pants when I throw ’em out to you. Lock his pants and
shoes up with all his other pants and then start in cooking. Cook up
everything you got in the house. And when you get a chance run down to
Gilligan’s and tell him to send up five pounds of dried apples.”
“I’m on, pop!” suddenly shouted Embryo Admiral Walter Francis,
springing to his feet alive once more. “You’re going to feed me up for
a couple of weeks so I’ll make the weight. Gosh, you’re there with the
bean, pop—I never woulda thought of the scheme.”
“For a couple of weeks!” cried Parent Francis scornfully. “For a couple
of days, you mean, son. Come on into the dining-room and start right
in to——. No, stay right where you are. Don’t move from now on unless
you have to or you might lose another ounce. You just sit right there
all day. Ma will do the cooking and I’ll be the waiter. And if you’re
not up to weight inside of three days then I’m a German spy. And
don’t weaken. Just keep in mind that even if you do it won’t get you
anything. For I’m going to keep the key to all your pants right in my
pocket till you cripple the weighing scales. So all you’re going to do
from now on is stick around and eat.”
Already Mrs. Francis had passed into the room a nightshirt and a
three-quart pitcher brimming with sparkling Croton. Without a pause
Parent Francis had filled a tumbler and passed it on to his offspring,
who eagerly drained the glass. Tumbler after tumbler of water was
tumbled into the digestive system of the underweight linotyper, while
steadily from the kitchen came the happy sizzling of four pork chops
and fast-frying potatoes with trimmings.
Twenty-one glasses of water disappeared into young Walter Francis
before Saturday’s sun had set, together with all the pork chops, the
fried potatoes, thick slices of buttered bread, and some other snacks.
The Sunday treatment included fourteen glasses of water and a general
packing-in of fattening fodder, until dinner-time arrived, when son
Walter was fed up on two pounds of steak smothered in boiled potatoes
with trimmings of stewed corn and mashed turnips, all resting on a
solid foundation of well-buttered bread and roofed with a generous slab
of apple pie. And then:
One and one-quarter pounds of mutton-chops merely formed the
architectural approaches to the breakfast Walter Francis found staring
him in the face when he arose heavily on Monday morning. Ham and eggs
in groups—salty ham which hadn’t been parboiled, thus retaining
its thirst-arousing properties—was the centerpiece around which the
luncheon Mrs. Francis had prepared that day for her son was draped. A
dinner that ran all the way from soup to nuts (the time was growing
short if Parent Francis was to make good on his promises) followed on
Monday night, the big noise of the Monday dinner being a sirloin steak.
And just before Son Francis decided to call it a day and waddle to bed
Spanish-American War Veteran Francis had a final happy thought. Father
fed son a plentiful supply of dried apples and then unleashed a growler
and went down to the corner and got a quart of collarless beer. Walter
Francis flooded the dried apples with the entire quart of beer, cried
“Woof! I’m a hippopotamus!” and collapsed into bed.
Tuesday morning last Father and Mother Francis personally helped their
son toward the street-door after he had breakfasted on five pork-chops,
two cups of coffee and four rolls. Once more he was about to set
sail for the Second Naval Battalion recruiting office at the foot of
Fifty-second Street, where three days earlier he had been turned down
as hopelessly shy on tonnage. Parent Francis helped his bouncing boy
aboard the trolley-car, shouting a last word of caution to walk, not
run, to the nearest entrance to the recruiting station.
And just before young Mr. Francis applied again for the job of ridding
the seas of _U_-boats (it should be mentioned incidentally that about
half an hour earlier his father had unlocked a pair of pants and
other gent’s furnishings for the trip) the potential admiral saw the
burnished sign on a corner saloon. He got off the car carefully, drank
seven glasses of water in the saloon and then eased his way into the
presence of the surgeon who had given him the gate on Saturday.
“I told you before you were many pounds underweight, young man,” said
the surgeon. “It’s utterly useless for you to come around here when——”
“But that was away last week, Doc,” wheezed young Mr. Francis. “Give me
another try at your scales.”
“My Gordon!” cried the surgeon, glancing at the scales and uttering his
favorite cuss-word. “Saturday you were seven pounds under weight and
to-day you’re a pound overweight! How’d yuh ever do it?”
“I’ve heard of lads getting their teeth pulled to get out of serving
Uncle Sam, but you’re the first guy I ever heard of who made a fool of
his stummick to get into the Navy,” grinned Bos’n Carroll as Walter
Francis bared his brawny arm for the vaccine. “Welcome to our ocean,
Kid!”