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But just as he had settled himself comfortably he heard Corporal Goddard’s step on the stairs and a less determined step behind him. He took his feet down from the rung of the other chair, pulled his undress jacket into place, and took up a pen.

Corporal Goddard saluted at the door and introduced with a wave of his hand the latest applicant for Uncle Sam’s service. The applicant was as young as Lieutenant Claflin, and as good-looking; but he was dirty and unshaven, and his eyes were set back in the sockets, and his fingers twitched at his side. Lieutenant Claflin had seen many applicants in this stage. He called it the remorseful stage, and was used to it.

“Name?” said Lieutenant Claflin, as he pulled a printed sheet of paper towards him.

The applicant hesitated, then he said,

“Walker–John Walker.”

The Lieutenant noticed the hesitation, but he merely remarked to himself, “It’s none of my business,” and added, aloud, “Nationality?” and wrote United States before the applicant answered.

The applicant said he was unmarried, was twenty three years old, and had been born in New York City. Even Corporal Goddard knew this last was not so, but it was none of his business, either. He moved the applicant up against the wall under the measuring-rod, and brought it down on his head.

So he measured and weighed the applicant, and tested his eyesight with printed letters and bits of colored yarn, and the lieutenant kept tally on the sheet, and bit the end of his pen and watched the applicant’s face. There were a great many applicants, and few were chosen, but none of them had quite the air about him which this one had. Lieutenant Claflin thought Corporal Goddard was just a bit too callous in the way he handled the applicant, and too peremptory in his questions; but he could not tell why Corporal Goddard treated them all in that way. Then the young officer noticed that the applicant’s white face was flushing, and that he bit his lips when Corporal Goddard pushed him towards the weighing-machine as he would have moved a barrel of flour.

“You’ll answer,” said Lieutenant Claflin, glancing at the sheet. “Your average is very good. All you’ve got to do now is to sign this, and then it will be over.” But he did not let go of the sheet in his hand, as he would have done had he wanted it over. Neither did the applicant move forward to sign.

“After you have signed this,” said the young officer, keeping his eyes down on the paper before him, “you will have become a servant of the United States; you will sit in that other room until the office is closed for to-day, and then you will be led over to the Navy-yard and put into a uniform, and from that time on for three years you will have a number, the same number as the one on your musket. You and the musket will both belong to the government. You will clean and load the musket, and fight with it if God ever gives us the chance; and the government will feed you and keep you clean, and fight with you if needful.”

The lieutenant looked up at the corporal and said, “You can go, Goddard,” and the corporal turned on his heel and walked downstairs, wondering.

“You may spend the three years,” continued the officer, still without looking at the applicant, “which are the best years of a young man’s life, on the sea, visiting foreign ports, or you may spend it marching up and down the Brooklyn Navy-yard and cleaning brass-work. There are some men who are meant to clean brass-work and to march up and down in front of a stone arsenal, and who are fitted for nothing else. But to every man is given something which should tell him that he is put here to make the best of himself. Every man has that, even the men who are only fit to clean brass rods; but some men kill it, or try to kill it, in different ways, generally by rum. And they are as generally successful, if they keep the process up long enough. The government, of which I am a very humble representative, is always glad to get good men to serve her, but it seems to me (and I may be wrong, and I’m quite sure that I am speaking contrary to Regulations) that some of her men can serve her better in other ways than swabbing down decks. Now, you know yourself best. It may be that you are just the sort of man to stand up and salute the ladies when they come on board to see the ship, and to watch them from for’ard as they walk about with the officers. You won’t be allowed to speak to them; you will be number 329 or 328, and whatever benefits a good woman can give a man will be shut off from you, more or less, for three years.