New Britain Herald Newspaper, February 23, 1923, Page 20

[ —— As told toe W, A, Davenport, Ngw Yorx, Saturday, OR the sake of his job we shall have to be content with eall- ing the hero of this interview Joe, Furthermore Joe insists, also in the interest of the same valuable job, that the name of his ship be omitted. You are assured, however, that Joe used to dispense drinks and barroom philosophy in wvarious of our very best cafes and hotels, He entered the barkeep business away back In the days when Pitte- burgh was credited with a population made up entirely of overnight mil- lionaires. Irving Berlin was still a singing walter on the Bowery and the Boston Dip was the menace of the ballroom when Joe started out, pink and green from the County Mayo, as a purveyor of the outcast cocktall and highball, Joe was be- hind the bar in Broadway near For- ty-sixth street at the time he was legialated out of his profession, “For two months,” said he, *I had a fine time seeing the inside of theaters and getting acquainted with my family. The Volstead law had pot us out of business and it was up % me, & man of 55, to get another Job, For years I had been putting in twelve, fourteen and s!xteen hours aday behind the bar or going to and coming from work. I had spent pours helping folks enjoy themselves, { was getting my enjoyment second pand, but T was making money. The wife maved t. A Soda Water Clerk. “Two months of loafing and I went to work on a soda water bar in the Pennsylvania Hotel. I'd like to tejl you of the men that used to drop In for a sundae or a banana split or 8 cherry phosphate or something and look me over and say: e “‘Well, for heaven's sake, if it ain’t Joe!’ “Many’s the time I'd served him cocktalls, But to get on with my story, I met an old barkeep who told me he was working on an American Imer. “'What doing? 1 asked. ‘Stew- ard? “ ‘Steward ‘Tending bar.’ “'‘So you're a soda jerker, too,’ says 1. “‘Soda jerker nothing,’ says he, ‘The old stuff.’ “ ‘Bootlegging? says L. “‘And you're a pickpocket,’ yells he, ready to fight, “Well, we shake hands and he tells me he's come to get me a job. That was cighteen months ago. He takes me to Washington, where 1 was as- signed to one of the Shipping Board liners as barkeep, and I'm now serv- ing booze the same as ever under the Stars and Stripes on a liner leased by the Shipping Board to a well known corporation. “When I landed from trip before last T noticed that they were raising the devil in Congress and the Prohi- bition Director's office about booze on American ships. The Shipping Board came back with the statement that they had to sell booze or lose all thelr customers. In other words, folks going abroad were not unmind- ful that they were going to have the opportunity to have a drink or so before returning. The majority ot them decided to drink as soon as pos- sible, which means the moment the three mile limit is crossed going east. “Now, I'm nothing but a barkeep. That's all I've been all my life since 1 was 19. Personally I take a drink myself now and then, but that's neither here nor there. 1 mention it merely to show you that I'm not one of those barkeeps who never drank a drop and sneered at folks for fools who did. And despite the fact I take a drink now and then and enjoy 1t I own my own home in Newark and another house in Jamaica, Long Isl- and. If T should drop dead the wife won't starve. My two girls are mar- rled to bright yeung business men, and my boy's a dentist with a whale of a practice. An Open Minded Man. “I mentlon this merely to show that all the drinking I ever did never made a bum of me. So you mee I have a claim to being open minded about this booze game—that is, from my personal standpoint. There's those drink has ruined. There's those that it never harmed. Corn fritters will kill you if you go crazy on them. Get me? What I'm trying to say is that I'm neither wet nor dry; one side or the other. I don't want what I'm going to say to be set down as propaganda, for I'm against radicals both ways. “Now what 1I'd like to see is some open minded investigator—somebody with no connections with the wets and none with the drys—take a trip or two on an American liner and watch Americans drink. For that matter I'd like to have him just follow Amer- jcans a®ross the water, no matter what flag was flying from the mast- head. It has given me a lot to think about. ‘Trouble with me is that I can't draw clear conclusions in words from what I've seen and heard in the last eighteen months. “Have you ever seen a man who's been a whale at his game for a dozen years or so and then lay off for a couple of years? And have you no- ticed that maybe that man, taking up his old game after the layoft, ain’t the whale he used to be? Sort of lose his cunning or something! And you notleed him explaining that his hand is out and that he’ll soon be as good as ever? I've seen ‘em. 1 knew a doctor who did it. “This doctor was a big boy with Sabiem He used to be called in by nothing,’ says he. Has America Forgotten How To Drink? A Bartender on an American Liner, Telling What Happens Beyond Three Mile Limit, Says We Have Lost the' Liquor Habit Fifth avenue folks, There was some- thing mysterious almost about the way pe could handle babies. Seemed to see their minds and see the In- sides of them and know almost by instinet what the matter with the little fellows, even If they couldn't tell themselves, Well he rolled up a plle and went up to Canada to lve in the woods for a couple of yeal “He came back to New York, but he wasn't the same, He was no longer the marvel, He was a good dootor, all right, but there were hun- dreds as good. He'd lald off too long and lost his cunning, His fingers had gone thick on him and the old bean wasn't as sharp as it used to be, This may be old stuff to a lot of sharps, but I was never much for high education and what T learned I learned by watching drinking men and women. I got my education by watching people, not reading books, He Tells a Story. ‘“Well, Americans have forgotten how to drink. Get me right, now, and don't think I'm trying to say that they don't drink, They do drink, but they've got out of the habit and their abllity to drink has suffered. Let me tell you a story that you might call typical. “Last spring I took my place be- hind the bar the minute we'd passed the three mile limit and who lines up at it but a man I'd known for years! He's a lawyer with a lot of good clients and a nice home out in West- chester county, I used to make dou- ble Bronxes for him almost every night when I worked at the Belmont Hotel. He would, stop in before catching his train and shoot just two drinks—both double Bronxes—and then he'd blow. Sometimes of a Saturday he'd shoot three. Once in a while he'd vary it by taking a tall Scotch highball with plain water, Perfection Scotch was his favorite, “Well, we talk over the old times for a minute and he introduces me to a friend of his—a man about 50, who looked like he had seen things. They had double Bronxes. My lawyer told me he’d been obeying the law. Hadn't hardly touched a thing since the country went dry except now and then a shot of hooch at the country club or at an evening party. But you might as well say he'd been on the water wagon ever since the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted. And I believe that about 75 per cent. of Americans are like him on the matter. “There’s a lot of talk about there being more drinking now than there ever was, but that {s bunk—ignorant bunk. There {sn’t as much or nearly a# much, because it is too hard to get and people can't pay the grice and more won't take the chance of killing themselves drinking the boot- leg stuff. 1 know all about it and we'll let it go at that. “Well, T notice that th® second double Bronx kicked my lawyer be- low the belt. He used to be able to shoot two, three or four of them, one after the other—bing, bing, bing, like that. And he'd be as sober as Bill Bryan. But the second double Bronx got to him. He began to talk loose like, not like the gentle- man he is by birth and breeding and education. He began to talk cheap and loud. It wasn't for me to say anything when he took his fourth and began to get sloppy. “They put him to bed dead to the world after the sixth and his friend was just as bad. He wasn't used to it. He'd lost his capacity. However, he was all right in the morning and he blew in for a bromo seltzer. Later in the afternoon he dropped in again. ' ‘Yes, sir?’ T asks, “Just Orange Juice.” ' 'Please let me have a double orange Jjuice—without gin, Just orange juice.’ ‘“"He sipped it and began talking. “‘Queer thing, Joe,’ says he, ‘but T guess I'm about through drinking. I thought when I started that I was due to have quite a time of it. You know they all kid you a lot when you're leaving for Europe or any wet country. They all smack their lips and tell you to have one on them and all that sort of stuff. And you are resolved to do just that. Well, you saw me make an ass of myself last night. T feel physlcally all right and aside from the inevitable pangs of remorse my conscience is clear, But I've lost the habit. I've lost the taste. 1 scarcely can describe just how I feel ahout it.’ “Well, that lawyer was in to see me twice a day, being a good sailor, until we reached the other side. And he didn't take another drink. Used to laugh about it and say all over again that he'd lost his taste for the stuff. Drank orange juice instead. He had a trial fling and woke up seeing things in a different light. T don’t know whether I can get it over to you, but as T dope it out he had changed his whole viewpoint regard- Ing booze. “As T see it, when booze was to be bought a man went in and hought out of habit as much as taste. No, I'll go that one better. I think habit was two-thirds and taste was one- third. Tt don't take a barkeep to tell you that nobody but the born souse—the rumhound born with the weakness—likes the stuff straight off the bat. Drinking liquor is what they call an acquired taste with all but the dipsomaniacs. And as the guys used to say, it wasn't the taste of the stuff they liked so much as it was what the stuff did to you. Of course that was a lot of bunk— straight bunk. Drinking was a eon- vivial habit, not a one man pleasure “As 1 sny, habit was the biggest part of the drinking, A man gets out of the habit, and he's just as sick after a fow shots as he was the first time he went out as a college boy or a kid with his first pay envelope in his pocket and drank too much, Then, whether he knows it or not, there is the feeling in his mind that there's no use doing something that 18 going to make him feel rotten, and he naturally lets up, “But let me get back to my job behind the bar on an American liner, Funny part of this is to me that only “‘Queer thing, Joe,' says he, ‘but 1 guess I'm about through drinking. I've lost the habit. I've lost the tas now they've been raising the devil about us selling the stuff on Ameri- can ships. Bverybody knows we've been doing it for a couple of years, I've seen Americans hit the bar out past the three mile limit in singles, in pairs and whole parties. For the most part they've done just what my lawyer friend has done— plunged, recovered and quit. But then you'll see the old timers come in, take a drink day after day, just as though they'd been getting thelr hooch back in the States every day despite the Eighteenth Amendment. They handied their stuff like men and didn't let it throw them, May be they have cellars full at home and never lost the habit. “That's not the point, is it? You see we sail with a fine line of liquor stuff withdrawn from the stocks taken into Government warehouses when prohibition went into effect and stuff bought in England and France. Our bars are not quite so fancy as those on British and French liners, I'm told, but we have about everything that the other boats have, And our prices are about the same as on the British boats. Have to be, you see, because not only do they have to sell booze on American ships to draw trade but we've got to charge prices no higher than our competitors, “I have In mind an fineident that has a lot of laughs in it, Maybe it won't be so funny to you, but it was funny to see, Once when we opened the bar a party came Into the cafe, There were three men and three women, I'd call them the sporty people of, say, the small commuting town's country club, I'd take the men to be little brokers or real estate dealers or something Ilke that, Got into knickerbockers, the men did, the moment they got on ship, Lots of new looking luggage. Everything seemed new about them — their clothes, money and themselves. Setting a Background. “Clothes a bit too gay and a dia- mond or two too many. Apt to call waiter George and the barkeep Eddie, Bort of see them living in an expen- sive suburban development in Dutch colonial houses and playing a regular Saturday night game of poker from one house to the other. The men went In for patent leather hair and manicures. The women were a little too well done. Do you get the kind I mean? “I'd say the average age of the six was 30, I mention that only to let you know they weren't freshmen at living. Well, they start a party the minute we open the bar. There's a ot of talk about no more freedom in the States and how they may buy England If they like it and live there for the rest of their lives, They start with bacardi cocktalls and wind up with champagne, I knew they would That sort always “Inside of an hour and a half they were all plastered. The next day two of the men come in asking for whisky sours to cure them of the hangover they had, There was a Britisher on board and he was at the bar, The Americans and he got to talking, and after a while he began to josh them a little. And to my surprise the older of the two Ameri- cans takes the kidding seriously. He bawled the Britisher out in grand style. It would have made a great temperance speech, It was in pretty poor taste seen and heard from some angles, but it seems that the Ameri- can thought the Britisher was josh- ing America when he was only hav- ing a bit of fun about the easy way the Americans had been bowled over the night before, “'What if we are dry in the States?’ yells the American a trifie too loud maybe, but I sort of perked up, thinking of some of the barroom arguments I used to hear. ‘What if we are dry? We're a damned sight better off.’ “Get that! I'rom a collar adver- tisement boy who you'd take for a guy who wouldn’t put up a fight any- wher “‘What if the States is dry? says he to the Englishman. ‘That's our The First Movie Theatergoers dating back a quar- ter of a century remember vividly the hit an English actress made with her songs and merry wink. The latter and a projecting “bun” of blond hair distinguished her even in those days of Gaiety girls from London. Lately little has been heard of Cissy Fitzgerald, who has lived in retirement at Brighton. She is returning to our stage this fall, in looks not a day older, and with her peculiar charm preserved for the benefit of the younger generation. Here is an interview she had with herself: By CISSY FITZGERALD. M UCH better be a “has 4 bee! than a ‘“never was"—them’s my senti- ments, My dear Cissy Fitzgerald, how ridiculous to call yourself the first motion picture star. Dear lady, have you never heard of a little woman called Mary Pickford, Norma Talmadge and many others who would fight for first rank? Come out of the clouds and get down to earth. I still persist, replled Cissy in a most dignified air. Well, if you are, don't own up to it. Nonsense, re- plied Cissy. You know that old ad- age, “A woman is never older than she looks and a man never older than he feels.” Cissy looked at herself in the mirror, and gave one of the famous winks. “The Winksome Widow” rushed through her foolish brain, a five reel comedy written and pro- duced for her by J. Stuart Blackton of the famous Vitagraph days—the film that renewed her acquaintance with the movie world after an ab- sence of twenty years. Yes, my dear readers, many of you will remember having seen that film when it played on Broadway for two weeks and afterward went all over the world. I actually got a letter from China only a short time ago from a friend 1 mrt.durlnn my stage appearance in Shanghai, telling me how much he had enjoyed it. You may recollect what a gay widow I was and how six admirers proposed in one night—for the hand of the lovely widow. Yes, six lovers followed me through the five reels, their devotion being so arduous. The last reel ended in the Winksome Widow's house catching fire and submerging the lovely widow up to her neck in a drawing room full of water. The local fire attendants had been too generous with their water supply in extinguishing the fire, and the consequence was all her house- hold effects, including herself and lovers, floated. I well recall this scene, for ft ruined a real French gown I had fust brought from Paris, and, as you can imagine, it became a total wreck. But, my dear Cissy, you are not telling us why you dare call yourself the first motion picture star in the world. Again I ask, “Have you never heard of Mary Pickford?” Well, yes, Cissy, but your first visit to a motion picture ball, held at the Hotel Astor a few years back, will amuse a few readers. It was my first venture into filmland. I had Jjust arrived from Europe (I am tak- ing you back now only nine years), where the film industry was in its infancy, and the only movie I had ever been to was a comedy of John Bunny and Flora Finch. It was my very first visit to a movie and the film was playing in my “home town,” to use an American expression— Brighton, England, , My excuse for entering the small hall was the persistence of my son, aged seven, to see the big fat man and funny thin woman. John Bunny and Flora Finch stood out in large posters—they weré what one calls “in big type.” The audience was horribly third class, and a piano with a decidedly tin tone played all the popular tunes of the day. Such musie hall songs as "“Three Women to Every Man,” “Can You Care, Wild Woman?" “Oh, Honey, My Honey,” the last mentioned being sung nightly by May Yohe, who was being again welcomed in London after an ab- sence of many years. I looked around and hoped no one would see me. I had pald threepence for my ticket, equivalent to six cents of American money. 1 suppose I was very snob- bish, for I feit I had no right to have taken my son into such an at- mosphere. Well, the entertainment started and we laughed much, very much, and the next time Bunnie and Finchie visited Brighton we were regular at- tendants. Oh, yes, we liked the movies. Now. after our largest music hall, the Alhambra, became a giorified picture palace, and since my return here, the past few years we have them at nearly every corner of a street, T hear. I need tell you no more of the big strides the Industry has made across Copyright, 1922, by The New York Herald. Star the “pond” since you have seen so many pictures that have been pro- duced there and learned that even the English aristocracy are making a bid to outdo American’ stars, for have we not Lady Diana Manners, who may even persuade Queen Mary to build a theater near Buckingham Palace, and who knows but what her Majesty may get the craze for facing the camera and become an attractive member of the movies. And now, to return to my Astor ball joke. Mr. Daniel Frohman was charming and wore his usual well bred manners, so impressive to all women, more especially to one bred and born in England. He welcomed Cissy, who had been a, big star with his late brother, Charlie, some years previous, I want to introduce you to our present day star, he said, “Mary Pickford.” I looked at him. meant nothing In my life. big picture star, he continued. is leading the march to-night. course you have heard of her. “No,” came the simple reply, and it was the honest truth. I had not heard of Mary Pickford—how could I, coming direct from London and having seen only the Bunny Finch film. Mr. Frohman sought out Mary and introduced me to a very pretty little blonde girl with a pink gown covered with a cream lace effect and tied with a simple sash that fell Mary Pickford She is a She or down the back of her skirt. You see ' how good my memory is after nine years, but the sweet little thing im- pressed me. I thought how English she looked, and afterward—she was But now, Cissy, you are again drifting from your interview with vourself, and after meeting such a picture star as Mary Pickford how dare you make the bold assertion that you are the first motion picture star in the world? Well, I am, so here goes. We Wil go back to the days when you had no picture theaters—no studios and the moving film was be- ing experimented on. The great Edi- son was perfecting it, and wrote a line _to Clssy Fitzgerald, who was then starring with. the late Charlie Frohman in a comedy entitled, “The Foundling,” at Hatye Theater, Cissy was playing the part of the tricky little Magbut and dancing her fa- mous Gaiety Girl dance. Now, there are many readers who can recall those days and will tell you Cissy Fitzgerald was as well known as Mary Pickford is to-day. business, and as 1 sald, we're & damned sight better off, Look at the bank deposits and look at the men buying houses instead of hooch, Good thing for everybody to go dry,’ Ne More Drinks on Trip. “He went on ke that even after the Britisher slipped away, Of course 1 took it to be remorse talking, but none of that party drank another drop during the trip. This s only one instance, I've seen It happen a hundred times. Maybe you can ae- count for it, The only way I have of accounting for it is that Amerls cans have got out of the habit of drinking and, like the baby specials ist I was talking about, they find it hard to get their hand In again or thelr stomachs in again, whichever way you want to put it, “Taking all my experience on an American liner Into consideration I must say that the big majority of Americans are drinking much d!ffer- ently, They used to shoot the stuff Jike they did everything clse—in a hurry. The American drinking man was 100 per cent. American. He didn’t drink like the Eurnpean any more than he works like the Eu- ropean. While he may not be so neat about it, and while he may hy ¢ a lot of lost motion, the American will turn off a job in about half the time the European will, It was same with his drinking. ropean would take a day or at lei an afternoon to his drinking, and he stood up well under it because he took it easy. You know the old say- ing about take it easy and you'll last longer, don't you? “But the American shot his hooze like he shot his affairs—bing, bingz bing. Get me? He was too buay to take it easy. That was the trouble. Because he refused to take his 1rinks slowly and quletly, the drys had enough horrible examples to app2ll a sufficient number of voters and we got the Eighteenth Amendment “I'll never forget the night when an organizer for the union addressed us barkeeps down in Thirty-ffth street. That was ten years ago, and I ask you if you wouldn't have handed the bird, as the English say, to a guy who, ten years ago, told you New York was going dry. Well, this organizer was talking to a lot of us union barkeeps and he warned us of the necessity of keeping our mem- bership solid. “‘You want to get all that’s com- ing to you now,’ said he, 'because it won't be long before you'll be out ot jobs because the United States of America is going dry.’ “I remember his words as If it was vesterday, Well, we laughed at him and handed him a crop of raspberries, But he didn’t laugh. I often thought of that guy since. A wise, wise bird. Do you know what he's doing now! Well, he's making some sort of an orange drink out in Denver and cleaning up big. His name is Harry McCabe, and a long while ago he was tending bar in the old Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. First Trip on the Liner. “But to get back to my job on the ship, I'll never forget the first trip I made behind the bar of an American liner. There were five ministers on board going to England to attend some convention or other. And it's that makes me laugh when I hear fhat only recently they've been rais. ing a row about selling hooch on American liners. “The four ministers came into the bar and ordered sarsaparilla or some- thing, and a couple of men with la. dies came in and ordered champagne, I didn’t get wise to it myself at first. And at the start I think they thought the party was having a little fun— you know, ordering champagne and Arinking cider or something. “The preachers went out only to come in a little later and find one of the party a bit noisy. It was all right. They only had a quart of champagne among the four of them, and all of them were all right except this one, “Well, the clergymen began to get suspicious. Also there were present some gentlemen drinking whisky and, well, there Was a barroom tang in the air. Everybody was all right and all that, but an infant would have known we were selling booze. * ‘Wil you please tell me,’ said one of the ministers, ‘whether you are serving intoxjcants here? We have been wondering, and I sald that it was quite impossible that liquor could be served thus under the Stars and Stripes,’ “‘Yes, sir,’ I sald, ‘we are serving liquor.’ “He seemed kinda knocked out for a minute and then he said: “‘Do you mean to tell me that you are a bootlegger?’ “‘No, sir, I'm a barkeep getting my $100 a month and bed and board and whatever I can pick up.’ “‘But whose llquor is this you #ell? Where does it come from? Who pays you?' *°1 don’t know whose liquor it is, 1 replied, ‘unless it belongs to the United States or the company run- ning this liner, and I don't know where it comes from. I'm paid regu- larly by the company, sir,’ “Would you believe it, thoss four outraged clergymen beat it for the captain and demanded an explana- tion. I don't know what he told them, but they came back and took my name and a statement from me and drew up a long report for the President of the United States to read. They made a duplicate of it for the American Ambassador In London, who they intended visiting, they sald, “That's the last | ever heard of that, And do you wonder | laugh when I see that some Congressman or Benator is raising the devil about selling liguor on American lines? But what's all the shooting for now? Everybody knew it all the time ‘There was no secret on the ship, The cafe door was open all the time and there was the liquor list with six bucks for champagne and wo biws for booze, “There was a lady something like the ministers, but she didn't learn about us selling booze for a long time, This was only a couple of months ago, She was told that we were selling the stuff and came down and asked about it. Being assured that we were she sald that she would have it stopped. She bawled us out generally, “She asked me It I waan't ashamed of myself making a joke of the laws of my country, “*No, ma'am,' I told her, ‘I'm not ashamed of what I'm doing, If that's what you mean, I'm hired to tend bar and I'm doing what I'm hired to do' “‘Well,’ says she, ‘I'll have you out of this job as soon as I get home. My Congressman will be told of this, “I didn't figure that it was up lo me to tell her that her Congressman and all other Congressmen knew all about it and always had. But to get back to my original idea, let me tell you again that Americans don't drink like they used to. They have lost the knack, let's call it. Of course you've heard that transatlantic liners are the scenes of drinking bouts and wild parties all the time. That's all bunk, “I've seen trips when we didn't sell enough liquor ,to,keep a good two handed barkeep busy half time. I tell you the way 1 dope it out, Folks have lost the hang of drinking, and If the booze was to come back this minute I think a lot of ginmills would go out of business in a’ month or so. It would take folks a year to get back Into the custom of taking the stuff. Maybe after that they'd be drinking as much as ever,’ but it would take a year to get them goin< again. Some Other Factors. “There's two or three reasons fur that. A lot of men who never had a cent in their lives before have a few dollars in the bank now, and they are realizing how foolish they were to b pickled all the time. The majority of those men would never come bacli. Money in the bank and no debts are a new sensation and a nice one. Anl then the women folks would see to it that the men didn't guzzle the w: they used to. “There was a blg bootlegger on on+ trip across. I know him of old. He used to he the agent for Scotch whisky before the war and was well known on Broadway as a spender. Now he's shipping the stuff in Brit- ish and French boats to Canada an| having it smuggled in over the bor der. He says to me: “‘Joe, did it ever occur to you thit you can sell anything provided the law says you can't? ' It's like thi:. Here on this boat there are about £50 Americans, Not more than fifty of them have come down here to buy booze. Yet I'll bet 150 of them Buy the stuff at home from bootleggers. They will pay $125 for a case of stuff that would remove varnish, and they drink it. But they won't come down here and buy good stuff at two bits a throw, \ **No,' says he, ‘it ain't easy to un- derstand. If I went up to one of these gentlemen and offered to sell him a dozen bottles of Haig & Haig. or Dawson’s Old Curio, which we'll all admit was good whisky, they'd say no. But I can sneak up Main street on a dark night with 4 few cases of liquid sudden death and sell it through back doors for a profit of 600 per cent. Humanity is a damn funny thing, Joe!' How the Soldier Walked. “That’s about all I have on my mind. But don't let anybody tell you that there are nothing but drink- ing bouts and booze festivals on American liners, because that ain't 80. Americans as a class ain't drinking like they use to. Forhe- thing’s happened to them. Maybe it's like the crippled soldier I knew of. The doctors decided thAt he was cured and they told him to turn tn his crutches and beat it. “‘Turn in my crutches,’ he yells. ‘How in hell do you expect me to walk, or do you figure on me craw|- ing home? “'You can walk without crutches.’ they told him. ‘Just try it.’ “But he wouldn't, and so they framed it with a hard boiled ser- geant to do the dirty work. The ser- geant gets the soldier out on the lawn and then suddenly bumps inte him hard. The soldier went head ovet heels and the sergean® picking up the crutches, walks on laughing. What does the soldier do but get up eussing the sergeant up hill and down valley. But he is up, and he beats it after the sergeant withont the crutches and slaps the sergeant in the face, “Then the soldier realized that he'd been walking without the crutches He strode into the chief doctor's office and bawls him out. Then e bawls out every other” doctor. Then he packs up his stuff and goes home “Maybe that's it. Maybe the Amer- ican people have just begun to un- derstand that they never needed booze at all and can get on elegantly without it. Anyway that's the way 1 dope it out and I'm not an edu. cated man.” ur Speeial Foature Page o Worth While Stories