Fiddler's Luck

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V I FIDDLE DUETS WITH THE TRUMP OF WAR MY adventures as a fiddler militant began with the extremely musical sound made by a postal card as it came clicking through my Boston letter slot. Filled with gloomy forebodings by what the examiner for the first Platts- burg Reserve Officers' Training Camp...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V I FIDDLE DUETS WITH THE TRUMP OF WAR MY adventures as a fiddler militant began with the extremely musical sound made by a postal card as it came clicking through my Boston letter slot. Filled with gloomy forebodings by what the examiner for the first Platts- burg Reserve Officers' Training Camp had told me a few days before, I had been watching that slot with a ferret's eye and the mind of a prisoner at the bar when the jury is filing in. You're all right, the examiner had said, except your occupation. Of course, you know, being an author is against you. But now through the slot this magic postal card, with its rich, roseate hue, burst into the middle of Blue Monday. The resulting shade was a royal purple of triumph. It directed me to report as number 2056 to the Commanding Officer at Plattsburg the day after to-morrow. Whoop-la what a relief Then I turned the radiant thing over to the address side, half expecting to see myself already called by the honorable title of Candidate. Name of a name It was addressed to another man I I descended into hell, and there and then decided to attend the Williams College R.O.T.C. and prepare for a more successful assault on the portals of the second Plattsburg. My plan of campaign was to execute a frontal attack in person, while dispatching my grave and reverend publisher on an expedition against the Washington flank, heavily armed with propaganda to the effect that the present chief need of the infantry was experienced writers. I will flit in an airy manner over my musical activities at Williamstown. You remember the one good witticism of that arch-bromide Philip Gilbert Hamerton? He remarked that old writers like Sir Thomas Malory sometimes condensed a whole psychological novel into the single phrase, ...