t for the first time.
To look at all you've got to push aside things you regarded as fixed. I
suppose every one has something that to him seems the things unshakable,
something he finds it terrifying to think of moving. All your traditions,
all your love and loyalty cling round this thing which it seems to you
you can't have touched. But Katie, as you read these pages won't you try
to think of things, not as you've been told they were, but just as they
seem to you from what you read? Think of them, not in the old grooves,
but just as it comes in to you as the story of a life?

"You'll try to do that for me, won't you, dear fair-minded,
loving-spirited Katie?

"I was a country boy; lived on a farm, got lonesome, thought about things
I had nobody to talk to about, read things and wanted more things to
read, part the dreamer and part the great husky fellow wanting life,
adventure, wanting to see things and know things--most of all, experience
things. I want to tell you a lot about it sometime. I can't let go the
idea that there is going to be a sometime. Just because there's so much
to tell, if nothing else. And, Katie, _isn't_ there something else?

"No way to begin the story of one's life!

"Then I went away from home. To see the world. Try my fortune.
Experience. Adventure. That was the call.

"And the very first thing I fell in with that recruiting officer in the
white suit. I can see just how that fellow looked. Get every intonation
as he drew the glowing picture of life in the army.

"The army sounded good. The army was experience, adventure, with a
vengeance. A life among men. A chance. He told me that an intelligent
fellow like me would soon be an officer. Of course I agreed perfectly I
was an intelligent fellow, impressed with army intelligence in picking me
for one. Why I could see myself as commander-in-chief in no time!

"There's the cruelty of it, Katie. The expectation they rouse to get
you--the contemptuous treatment after they've got you. The difference
between the army of the 'Men Wanted For the Army' posters and the army
those men find after those posters have done their work.

"Remember your telling me about visiting at Fort Riley when you were
quite a youngster? The good time you had?--how gay it was? How charming
your host was? As nearly as I can figure it out, I was there at the same
time, filling the noble office of garbage man. Now, far be it from me,
believing in the dignity of all labor, t