His eyes followed mine, and he
took instant umbrage:--
"So your brother vas one shump, vas he?" he yelled. "Your brother
vas a long sight better man zan you, mine frient. He go fight for
la France. You stay here. Get out!" And he put me out, and saved
the day and the trousers.
It was never a good plan for me to lie. It never did work out right,
not once. I have found the only safe plan to be to stick to the
truth and let the house come down if it must. It will come down
anyhow.
I reached New York with just one cent in my pocket, and put up at
a boarding-house where the charge was one dollar a day. In this
no moral obliquity was involved. I had simply reached the goal for
which I had sacrificed all, and felt sure that the French people
or the Danish Consul would do the rest quickly. But there was
evidently something wrong somewhere. The Danish Consul could only
register my demand to be returned to Denmark in the event of war.
They have my letter at the office yet, he tells me, and they will
call me out with the reserves. The French were fitting out no
volunteer army that I could get on the track of, and nobody was
paying the passage of fighting men.
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