These clothes remind me of the tailors sign on eur block, “A.  Levinsky, first class Tailor.  Wear a suit of our clothes and you will have a fit.”  I am liable to have several fits before I get acquainted with ’em.  If I could rent out the extra room, I could buy “makins” for a month.  They call ’em fatigue uniforms, and believe you me they called ’em right—­one look at ’em makes you tired.  The only things that fit are the hat cord and collar ornaments.

You know how it is with me Julie nothing ready made fits me but a hanky.

After studying the directions, I managed to make ’em hang on me.  I was so interested in ’em that on my way over to the barracks, I failed to salute a major who passed; he grabbed me amid ships with one hand and pointed to his shoulder with the other; my mind bein on clothing scenery instead of salutin, I piped up, You got no kick comin, look what they handed me.

Me and Skinny Shaner got on the outside of about a 1/2 dozen pickled pigs feet last night at the canteen and finished off with about a quart of ice-cream apeace.  Along about a hour or so afterwards during the mixing process, I guess the pigs feet got cold in the ice cream and commenced to kick.  Skinny was doubled up so he looked like a horse shoe bend on a scenic railroad.  I suggested that we each take a dose of Allen’s Foot Ease, as I heard that helped sore feet, but Skinny balked; he always was stubborn like that.  Finally, we sent in a three alarm for a doc.

[Illustration:  “You got no kick comin’—­look what they handed me.”]

He asked us what we’d been eatin; we couldn’t give up anything, otherwise we’d have “give up” the pigs-feet, so the Doc.  Allowed we had the appende-come-and-get-me.  That’s about as near to the truth as the Docs usually gets.  If you’re laying at death’s door they generally pull you thru.  The Doc said “operation at once” but havin read Irve Cobb’s book about Operations I passed the buck to Skinny and we both got better simultaneously to once.  I don’t jest “make” this appendicitis but I have a suspicion that’s its a disease that costs about $500.00 more than the stummick ache; anyhow its sumpin you have just before your Doc buys a new automobile.  All the samee, we’re off pigs feet fur life.

Yrs in Health

Barney.

P.S.—­I left my other shirt at the “chinks” to be laundered.  Don’t let him sell it for charges before I get back.

Dere Julie,

At last I am a officer; and it happened like this.  To make my old lady feel good, and knowin she didn’t know much of the “parley-voo” spoke in the army, I rote her that I had been made a Captain in the Latrines; this A.M. i gets a “billy-doo” from her asking me, now that I had got to be a high up officer, not to be too hard on the boys under me, and to always remember that I was once a buck private in the rear ranks.  I hope the old lady don’t think to look the word up in the dictionary, or she might, as Laura Blue Jeans Libby says “be rudely awakened.”  Eh What?