“And see what it did for me in the Army.  I don’t want to talk about myself, but I made a good average fighter and I would have been there to the last if I’d had my rights.  And I simply owe it all to my dear mother.  You might say she made me the man I am.  I wouldn’t ever have been tough if she’d cut my hair humanely from six years on.  I certainly hope Keats hasn’t gone too long.  One of us in a family is enough.”

That’s the way Bugs talks, and it sounds right sensible.  What I say now is, the idee had ought to be took up by the War Department at Washington, D. C. Let ’em pass a law that one boy out of, say, twenty-five has got to wear curls till his voice changes.  By that time, going round in this here scenic investiture, as you might say, he will be a demon.  In peace times it may add to our crimes of violence, but look what it will be when another war comes.  We’ll have the finest line of shock troops the world has ever produced, fit and anxious to fight, having led an embittered existence long enough to make it permanent.  No line would ever stand against a charge of them devils.  They would be a great national asset and might save the country while we was getting ready to begin to prepare a couple months after war was declared on us.

Still I don’t suppose it will be took up, and I ain’t got time to go down and preach it to Congress personally.

And now let me tell you one thing:  I’m going to sleep to-night without a care on my mind for the first time in a year.  This here Bugs unites to the distinction of his name a quick and handy nature, and my busiest troubles are over.

***End of the project gutenberg EBOOK ma Pettengill***

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