The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me | Page 3

fifty years, going out to a
ruthless war without our wives. We had packed our own valises at the
hotel that very morning in fear and trembling. We realized that
probably we were leaving half our things in closets and drawers and
were taking the wrong things with us, and checking the right things in
our trunks at our hotels in New York. We had some discussion about
our evening clothes, and on a toss-up had decided to take our tails and
leave our dinner coats in the trunks. But we didn't know why we had
abandoned our dinner coats. We had no accurate social knowledge of
those things. Henry boasted that his wife had taught him a formula that
would work in the matter of white or black ties with evening clothes.
But it was all complicated with white vests and black vests and
sounded like a corn remedy; yet it was the only sartorial foundation we
had. And there we were with land out of sight, without a light visible
on the boat, standing in the black of night leaning over the rail, looking
at the stars in the water, and wondering silently whether we had packed
our best cuff buttons, "with which to harry our foes," or whether we
might have to win the war in our $17.93 uniforms, and we both thought
and admitted our shame, that our wives would think we had "been
extravagant in putting so much money into those uniforms. The
admirable French dinner which we had just enveloped, seemed a
thousand miles away. It was a sad moment and our thoughts turned
naturally to home.
"Fried chicken, don't you suppose?" sighed Henry.

"And mashed potatoes, and lots of thick cream gravy!" came from the
gloom beside him.
"And maybe lima beans," he speculated.
"And a lettuce salad with thousand island dressing, I presume!" came
out of the darkness.
"And apple dumpling--green apple dumpling with hard sauce," welled
up from Henry's heavy heart. It was a critical moment. If it had kept on
that way we would have got off the boat, and trudged back home
through a sloppy ocean, and let the war take care of itself. Then Henry's
genius rose. Henry is the world's greatest kidder. Give him six days'
immunity in Germany, and let him speak in Berlin, Munich, Dresden,
Leipsic and Cologne and he would kid the divine right of kings out of
Germany and the kaiser on to the Chautauqua circuit, reciting his
wrongs and his reminiscences!
Henry, you may remember, delivered the Roosevelt valedictory at the
Chicago Republican convention in 1912, when he kidded the standpat
crowd out of every Republican state in the union but two at the election.
Possibly you don't like that word kid. But it's in the dictionary, and
there's no other word to describe Henry's talent. He is always jamming
the allegro into the adagio. And that night in the encircling gloom on
the boat as we started on our martial adventures he began kidding the
ocean. His idea was that he would get Wichita to vote bonds for one
that would bring tide water to Main Street. He didn't want a big
ocean--just a kind of an oceanette with a seating capacity of five
thousand square miles was his idea, and when he had done with his
phantasie, the doleful dumps that rose at the psychical aroma of the
hypothetical fried chicken and mashed potatoes of our dream, had
vanished.
And so we fell to talking about our towns. It seems that we had each
had the same experience. Henry declared that, from the day it was
known he was going to Europe for the Red Cross, the town had set him
apart; he was somewhat like the doomed man in a hanging and people
were always treating him with distinguished consideration. He had a

notion that Henry Lassen, the town boomer, had the memorial services
all worked out--who would sing "How Sleep the Brave," who would
play Chopin's funeral march on the pipe organ, who would deliver the
eulogy and just what leading advertiser they would send around to the
Eagle, his hated contemporary, to get the Murdocks to print the eulogy
in full and on the first page! Henry employs an alliterative head writer
on the Beacon, and we wondered whether he had decided to use
"Wichita Weeps," or "State Stands Sorrowing." If he used the latter, it
would make two lines and that would require a deck head. We could
not decide, so we began talking of serious things.
How quickly time has rolled the film since those early autumn days
when the man who went to France was a hero in his town's eyes.
Processions and parades and pageants interminable have passed down
America's main streets, all headed for