“Have you had reason to complain of the way I have executed your orders in the past? You have not, have you? Very well, then, if you are friendly to France that is no reason why you should go against your own interests. You know very well that the goods you get of me will cost you at least twice as much if you buy them of French makers.”
“I know that, but I will make a sacrifice.”
The Boche traveler was not discouraged. “You are making a mistake,” he remarked. “If you do business with us I will give you what no one in France can give you.”
“You have no doubt relatives who are French soldiers.”
“Listen to me,” said the Boche, interrupting him. “There is, perhaps, one who has the misfortune to be a prisoner in our country. Give me your usual order, tell me the name of the prisoner, one, no more, and I swear to you that I will secure his release as permanently disabled.”
The salesman was asked to repeat his offer. He did so, and the merchant said: “Very well; I will try you to see whether you keep your word.”
The manufacturer gave the order so ardently desired, and furnished the traveler with the name and address of one of his nephews who was a prisoner in Prussia. A week later the nephew arrived in Switzerland, with a number of prisoners who were totally disabled, astounded at his liberty, because he was perfectly well!—_Ladies’ Home Journal._
Officer—“Now, Private Jenkins, I am going to give you a very responsible job. Under our advanced trench is a large mine. I want you to stay there, and when the mine goes up I want you to blow this whistle. Now, do you clearly understand?”
Private Jenkins—“Well, there’s one thing I’m not certain of, sir. When do I blow the whistle—going up or coming down?”
A soldier got mixed recently. He tells about it in a letter home: “They put me in barracks; they took away my clothes and put me in khaki; they took away my name and made me ‘No. 575;’ they took me to church, where I’d never been before, and they made me listen to a sermon for forty minutes. Then the parson said: ‘No. 575, art thou weary, art thou languid?’ and I got seven days in the guardhouse because I answered that I certainly was.”
Miranda’s dropt her fancy-work and sailed across the Straits As a temporary “lady of the lamp;” And Jane’s abandoned portraiture to wash the cups and plates Of the Tommies in a temporary camp; And Ethel—nervy Ethel!—is a motor-driving Waac, And fairly saved her special Brigadier The day that Fritz got busy and our line came surging back In a temporary movement to the rear.