Rex Beach

“ The chief examiner started, then to Dalrymple he said: “Step aside, sir. Fall out.”
“What’s the idea?” Dimples inquired, with a rose-pink flush of embarrassment.
“You’re overweight. Next!”
“Why, sure I’m overweight; but what’s the difference?”
“All the difference in the world, sir. We can’t pass you. Please don’t argue. We have more work than we can attend to.”
Shipp turned back to explain.
“This is Norman Dalrymple, one of the best tackles we ever had at Harvard. He’s as sound as a dollar and stronger than a bridge. He’ll come down—”
“I’m sorry; but there’s nothing we can do. ”

“ OCCASIONALLY HE ORDERED HIS FAVORITE DISH, CORN-STARCH PUDDING
At the end of three weeks he was bleached; his face was drawn and miserable; he looked forth from eyes like those of a Saint Bernard. He had gained a pound!
HE HAD GAINED A POUND!
Human nature could stand no more. Listlessly he wandered into the club café and there came under the notice of a friend. It was no more possible for Dimples to enter a room unobserved than for the Leviathan to slip unobtrusively into port. ”

“ Pete and I spend our days making millions of gallons of tea and coffee and cocoa, and selling canned goods, and sewing on buttons, and cracking jokes, and playing the piano, and lugging stretchers, and making doughnuts, and getting the boys to write home to mother, and various little odd jobs; then, at night, we take supplies up to the lads in the front row of the orchestra. That’s a pretty game, by the way, for a man of my size. Nobody ever undertakes to pass me in a trench; I lie down and let them climb over. It keeps the boys good-natured, and that’s part of my job. ”

“ I’d give that loft building on Sixteenth Street to be alone with an order of corn-starch pudding. However, barring the fact that I haven’t lost an ounce in weight, I’m having a grand time, for there’s always something to do. Details are constantly passing through, to and from the front-line trenches, which (whisper) are so close that we can smell the Germans. ”

“ It’s a fact; Pershing says so. If you make good, you’ll be adding one man to every ten you meet.”
“‘One man to every ten!’” Dimples breathed. “That’s great! That’s more than I could have done the other way. I’m good for something, after all.”
It seemed impossible that a wealthy, prominent young New York club-man could so quickly, so utterly drop out of sight as did Dimples Dalrymple. One day he was in his familiar haunts, a rotund, mirth-provoking spectacle in his bulging uniform, with his tiny overseas cap set above his round, red face like the calyx of a huge ripe berry ”

“ They’re regular fellows, like us. They manage canteens and sell the things our boys can’t get. They don’t let them grow homesick; they make them play games and take care of themselves and realize that they’re not forgotten. Some of them get right up front and carry hot soup and smokes into the trenches.”
“Me for that!” Dimples was rising majestically. “I could carry soup—more soup than any man living. The trenches might be a little snug for me round the waist, but I’d be careful not to bulge them. ”

“ Dimples was mortified, humiliated; Shipp felt the disappointment quite as keenly.
“That’s the toughest luck I ever heard of,” the latter acknowledged. “You’ll have to reduce, that’s all.”
But Dimples was in despair.
“It’s healthy fat; it will take longer to run it off than to run the Germans out of France. The war will be over before I can do it. I want to get in now. Too fat to fight! Good Lord!” he groaned. “Why, I told everybody I was going in, and I cut all my ties. Now to be rejected!” After a time he continued: “It knocks a fellow out to reduce so much. ”

“ Dimples was amazed.
“Me? Why, the idea!”
“Sure!” Shipp nodded vigorously. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? And think of me standing at attention while he does it. Pretty soft for you Y fellows. Here you are going home with a decoration before I’ve even smelled powder.”
“Oh, I’m not going home,” the other declared. “Not yet, anyhow. A one-legged man can sell cigarettes and sew on buttons and make doughnuts just as well as a centipede.”
A smiling nurse paused at the bed to say:
“You’re awfully thin, Mr. Dalrymple, but we’ll soon have you nice and fat again. ”

“ They had little to say to each other; they merely murmured a few words and smiled; and while Dimples feasted his eyes upon the brown face over him, Shipp held his limp, wasted hand tight and stroked it, and vowed profanely that the sick man was looking very fit.
Later in the day the captain said, with something like gruffness in his voice:
“Lucky thing you pulled yourself together, old man, for you’re booked to take part in a ceremony to-morrow. A famous French general is going to kiss you on both cheeks and pin a doodad of some sort on your nightie.” ”

“ He’s a hundred-pound hymn-weevil, and the best all-round reverend that ever snatched a brand from the burning. He dragged me in under cover all alone, and he used no hooks. Pretty good for a guy his size, eh?
Pete and I are partners in crime—and, say, the stuff we pull in this hut! Movies, theatricals, concerts, boxing-bees—with the half-portion reverend in every scrimmage. He’s a Syncopated Baptist, or an Episcopalian Elk, or something; anyhow, he’s nine parts human and one part divine. That’s the way the Y is wearing them over here. He’s got the pep, and the boys swear by him. ”

“ To the boys at the front a fat man might be funnier even than a skinny one. He was mighty glad he had heard of the Y in time. And it would be glad he had, for his name was worth a lot to any organization. ”