Biltmore Oswald Read online

service for me; I cannotdecide what rating to select. To be a quartermaster one must know howto signal, and signaling always tires my arms. One must know how toblow a horrid shrill little whistle in order to become a boatswainmate, and my ears could never stand this. To be a yeoman, it isnecessary to know how to rattle papers in an important manner anddisseminate misinformation with a straight face, and this I couldnever do. I fear the only thing left for me is to try for acommission. I'm sure I would be a valuable addition to any wardroom.

  _May 6th._ "Man the drags! Hey, there, you flannel-footed camel, stopgalloping! What are you doing, anyway--playing horses?"

  "Don't be ridiculous," I cried out, hot with rage and humiliation;"you know perfectly well I'm not playing horse. I realize as well asyou do that this is a serious--"

  At this juncture of my brave retort a gun barrel stove in the back ofmy head, some one kicked me on the shin and in some indescribablemanner the butt of a rifle became entangled between my feet, and downI went in a cloud of dust and oaths. One-fourth of the entire Pelhamfield artillery passed over my body, together with its crew, whilethrough the roar and confusion raised by this horrible cataclysm Icould hear innumerable C.P.O.'s howling and blackguarding me infrenzied tones, and I dimly distinguished their forms dancing in rageamid descending billows of dust. The parade ground swirled dizzilyaround me, but I had no desire to arise and begin life anew. It wouldnot be worth while. I felt that I had at the most only a short time tolive, and that that was too long. The world offered nothing but themost horrifying possibilities to me. "What is the Biltmore to a man inuniform, anyway?" I remember thinking to myself as I lay there with mynose pressed flat to an ant hill, "all the best parts of it are ariddistricts, waste places, limitless Saharas to him. Death, where is thysting?" I continued, as an outraged ant assaulted my nose. The worldcame throbbing back. I felt myself being dragged violently away frommy resting place. I was choking. Bidding farewell to the ants, Iprepared myself to swoon when gradually, as if from a great distance,I heard the voice of my P.O. He was almost crying.

  "Take him out," he pleaded; "for Gord sake, take him out. He's hurtin'our gun."

  "ONE FOURTH OF THE ENTIRE PELHAM FIELD ARTILLERY PASSEDOVER MY BODY"]

  This remark gave me the strength to rise, but not gracefully. Myintention was to address a few handpicked words to this P.O. of mine,but fortunately for my future peace of mind I was beyond utterance.Weakly I tottered in the direction of the gun, hoping to supportmyself upon it.

  "Hey, come away from that gun!" howled the P.O. "Don't let him touchit, fellers," he pleaded. "Don't let him even go near it. He'll spoilit. He'll completely destroy it."

  "Say, Buddy," said the Chief to me, and how I hated the ignominy ofthe word, "I guess I'll take you out of the game for to-day. I'mresponsible for Government property, and you are altogether too big arisk."

  "What shall I do?" I asked, huskily. "Where shall I go?"

  "Do?" he repeated, in a thoughtful voice. "Go? Well, here's where youcan go," and he told me, "and this is what you can do when you getthere," and as I departed rather hastily he told me this also. Theentire parade ground heard him. How shall I ever be able to hold up myhead again in Camp? I departed the spot, but only under one boiler;however, I made fair speed. Like a soldier returning from a week inthe trenches, I sought the comfort and seclusion of the Y.M.C.A. HereI witnessed a checker contest of a low order between two unscrupulousbrothers. They had a peculiar technique completely their own. Itconsisted of arts and dodges and an extravagant use of thoseadjectives one is commonly supposed to shun.

  "Say, there's a queen down at the end of the room," one of them wouldsuddenly exclaim, and while the other brother was gazing eagerly inthat direction he would deliberately remove several of his men fromthe board. But the other brother, who was not so balmy as helooked, would occasionally discover this slight irregularity andproceed to express his opinion of it by word of mouth, which for sheerforce of expression was in the nature of a revelation to me. It wasappalling to sit there and watch those two young men, who hadevidently at one time come from a good home, sit in God's brightsunshine and cheat each other throughout the course of an afternoonand lie out of it in the most obvious manner. The game was finallydiscontinued, owing to a shortage of checkermen which they hadsecreted in their pockets, a fact which each one stoutly denied withmany weird and rather indelicate vows. I left them engaged in thepleasant game of recrimination, which had to do with stolen golfballs, the holding out of change and kindred sordid subjects. In myweakened condition this display of fraternal depravity so offended myinstinctive sense of honor that I was forced to retire behind theprotecting pages of a 1913 issue of "The Farmer's Wife IndispensableCompanion," where I managed to lose myself for the time in a rathercomplicated exposition of how to tell which chicken laid what egg ifany or something to that effect, an article that utterly demolishedthe moral character of the average hen, leaving her hardly a leg toroost on.

  _May 8th._ "Give away," said the coxswain to-day, when we werestruggling to get our cutter off from the pier, and I gave away tosuch an extent, in fact, that I suddenly found myself balancedcleverly on the back of my neck in the bottom of the boat, so that Iexperienced the rather odd sensation of feeling the hot sun on thesoles of my feet. This procedure, of course, did not go unnoticed.Nothing I do goes unnoticed, save the good things. The coxswain made afew comments which showed him to be a thoroughly ill-bred person, butfurther than this I was not persecuted. After we had rowedinterminable distances through leagues upon leagues of doggedlyresisting water a man in the bow remarked casually that he had severalfriends in Florida we might call upon if we kept it up a littlelonger, but the coxswain comfortably ensconced upon the hackamatack,was so deeply engrossed in the perusal of a vest pocket edition of the"Merchant of Venice" that he failed to grasp the full meaning of theremark. I lifted my rapidly glazing eyes with no little effort fromthe keelson and discovered to my horror that we had hardly passed morethan half a mile of shore-line at the most. What we had been doing allthe time I was unable to figure out. I thought we had been rowing. Icould have sworn we had been rowing, but apparently we had not. Ilooked up from my meditation in time to catch the ironical gaze of thecoxswain upon me, and I involuntarily braced myself to the assault.

  "THE PROCEDURE, OF COURSE, DID NOT GO UNNOTICED"]

  "Say, there, sailor," said he, with a slow, unpleasant drawl, "you'renot rowing; you're weaving. It's fancy work you're doing, blast yereyes!"

  All who had sufficient strength left in them laughed jeeringly at thiswise observation, but I retained a dignified silence--that is, so faras a man panting from exhaustion can be silent. At this moment wepassed a small boat being rowed briskly along by a not unattractivegirl.

  "Now, watch her," said the coxswain, helpfully, to me; "study the waythat poor fragile girl, that mere child, pulls the oars, and try to dolikewise."

  I observed in shamed silence. My hands ached. A motor boat slidswiftly by and I distinctly saw a man drinking beer from the bottle."Hell isn't dark and smoky," thought I to myself; "hell is bright andsunny, and there is lots of sparkling water in it and on the sparklingwater are innumerable boats and in these boats are huddled the poorlost mortals who are forced to listen through eternity to the wisecracks of cloven-hoofed, spike-tailed coxswains. That's what hell is,"thought I, "and I am in my probation period right now."

  "Feather your oars!" suddenly screamed our master at the strainingcrew.

  "Feather me eye!" yelled back a courageous Irishman. "What do youthink these oars are, anyway--a flock of humming birds? Whoever heardof feathering a hundred-ton weight? Feather Pike's Peak, say I; it'sjust as easy."

  Somehow we got back to the pier, but I was almost delirious by thistime. The last part of the trip was all one drab, dull nightmare tome. This evening my hands were so swollen I was forced to theextremity of bribing a friend to hold the telephone receiver for mewhen I called up mother.

  "What have you been doing?" she asked.

 
"Rowing," came my short answer.

  "What a splendid outing!" she exclaimed. "You had such a lovely dayfor it, didn't you, dear?"

  "Hang up that receiver!" I shouted to my friend; "hang it up, or mymother shall hear from the lips of her son words she should only hearfrom her husband."

  _May 9th._ I am just after having been killed in a sham battle, and soconsequently I feel rather ghastly to-day. I don't exactly knowwhether I was a Red or a Blue, because I did a deal of fighting onboth sides, but always with the same result. I was killed instantlyand completely. People