Well, ol' girl, you can see by the heading of this that we have gone
south. The plentifullest things down here is "dinges", mules and mud,
and you very seldom see one without the other. You know Julie "Birds
of a fether gathers no moss"; sumpin like that anyhow; you know Julie
I was never much on problems. I see a big lazy dinge yesterday asleep
against a corner of the barracks when the bugle blowed the mess call;
he woke up in time to hear the last notes; stretching himself and
scratching his bed, he said: "Dar she blows, dinner time for white
folks, but just 12 o'clock for niggers."
Well Julie, you can bet your Wrigleys and every hair on your bureau,
that what Sherman said about war is right; its easy to get in an' hard
to get out. Reminds me of the story my ol' man tells about when he
lived on a farm (You know Julie dere, I told you my old man was raised
on a farm in Brooklin, N.Y.U.S.A.). He stuck his bean into a yoke, to
teach a yearling calf to work double, and the way that calf started
to hot foot it to the other end of Long Island was some exhibition of
speed. He could have give the Empire State express a ten mile start
at Peekskill and beat it into Powkeepsy. He yanked my ol' man along
so fast that his feet only struck the ground every other mile. If the
calf had run around in a circle, my ol' man could have spit in his own
face. His coat tail stuck out so straight behind you could have played
a game of peaknuckle on it. Finally the o' man got hep that he wasn't
gonna be able to break the calf before the calf broke my ol' man's
neck so he yelled out, "here we come, dum our fool souls, somebody hed
us off." So Julie, see if somebody bobs up who is able and willin to
stop this little unpleasentness, let him go to it like a sick kitten
to a hot rock.
Member Julie that song we all usto sing comin home on the boat after
a picnic at Staten Island of the Patrick Dooley East Side Outing
and Chowder Club? You know Julie--The chorus ends with Beans! Beans!
Beans! Say kid, that song would fit in this camp like a hungry tramp
at a chicken dinner. Every farmer in the good ol' U.S.A. must have
planted nothing but beans for the last two years. We have 'em boiled
fer breakfast, baked fer dinner, and in the soup for supper. Every
time the Chaplin (not Charlie) says grace, he always "Thanks the Lord
for these tokens of his grace," and Skinny got forty-ate hours in the
booby hatch fer askin me real loud like, so everybody could hear him
to "please put some of them tokens on his plate."
[Illustration: "Dinner fer white folks, but jest 12 o'clock fer
niggers--"]
But all the same Julie I'm glad I'm here. Of course I miss you; as the
poet sez "Your brite smile haunts me still." Never will I ferget what
a beautiful picture you made the Sunday before I left when I was rowin
you round the lake in Central Park. You was settin up in the bough of
the boat trailing your lily white hand in the water, and looking up
into my eyes you gurgled in a voiced choking with love, emotion and
beer, you said, "Wouldn't it be heavenly derie, if we could go floting
down life's stream in a boat like this forever and ever"--an' me
paying 25c. an hour for the boat. Of course you didn't think of that,
did you derie.
Yours until Brooklyn wins another penant,