FullReads

At the Tuebingen gate of Stuttgart a corporal stood waiting to receive them. Several soldiers from Nordstetten had come out to meet their comrades; and Aloys clenched his teeth as every one of them greeted him with, “Gawk, how are you?” There was an end of all shouting and singing now: like dumb sheep the recruits were led into the barracks. Aloys first expressed a wish to go into the cavalry, as he desired to emulate George; but, on being told that in that case he would have to go home again, as the cavalry-training would not begin till fall, he changed his mind. “I won’t go home again until I am a different sort of a fellow,” he said to himself; “and then, if any one undertakes to call me gawk, I’ll gawk him.”

So he was enrolled in the fifth infantry regiment, and soon astonished all by his intelligence and rapid progress. One misfortune befel him here also; he received a gypsy for his bedfellow. This gypsy had a peculiar aversion to soap and water. Aloys was ordered by the drill-sergeant to take him to the pump every morning and wash him thoroughly. This was sport at first; but it soon became very irksome: he would rather have washed the tails of six oxen than the face of the one gypsy.

Another member of the company was a broken-down painter. He scented the spending-money with which Aloys’ mother had fitted him out, and soon undertook to paint him in full uniform, with musket and side-arms, and with the flag behind him. This made up the whole resemblance: the face was a face, and nothing more. Under it stood, however, in fine Roman characters, “Aloys Schorer, Soldier in the Fifth Regiment of Infantry.”

Aloys had the picture framed under glass and sent it to his mother. In the accompanying letter he wrote,–

“DEAR MOTHER:–Please hang up the picture in the front room, and let Mary Ann see it: hang it over the table, but not too near the dovecote; and, if Mary Ann would like to have the picture, make her a present of it. And my comrade who painted it says you ought to send me a little lump of butter and a few yards of hemp-linen for my corporal’s wife: we always call her Corporolla. My comrade also teaches me to dance; and to-morrow I am going to dance at Haeslach. You needn’t pout, Mary Ann: I am only going to try. And I want Mary Ann to write to me. Has Jacob all his oxen yet? and hasn’t the roan cow calved by this time? Soldiering isn’t much of a business, after all: you get catawampously tired, and there’s no work done when it’s over.”

The butter came, and was more effective this time: the gypsy was saddled upon somebody else. With the butter came a letter written by the schoolmaster, in which he said,–

“Our Matthew has sent fifty florins from America. He also writes that if you had not turned soldier you might have come to him and he would make you a present of thirty acres of land. Keep yourself straight, and let nobody lead you astray; for man is easily tempted. Mary Ann seems to be out of sorts with you,–I don’t know why: when she saw your picture she said it didn’t look like you at all.”

Aloys smiled when he read this, and said to himself, “All right. I am very different from what I was: didn’t I say it, Mary Ann,–eh?”

Months passed, until Aloys knew that next Sunday was harvest-home at Nordstetten. Through the corporal’s intervention, he obtained a furlough for four days, and permission to go in full uniform, with his shako on his head and his sword at his side. Oh, with what joy did he put his “fixings” into his shako and take leave of his corporal!

With all his eagerness, he could not refrain from exchanging a word with the sentry at the gate of the barracks and with the one at the Tuebingen gate. He must needs inform them that he was going home, and that they must rejoice with him; and his heart melted with pity for his poor comrades, who were compelled to walk to and fro in a little yard for two mortal hours, during which time he was cutting down, step by step, the distance that lay between him and his home.