But what I wanted to tell you about was Sebastian.  Well Al Shorty Lahey was trying to make me believe this bird was a bad egg and that they called him Nick the Blade because he always went a round with a knife and whittled you if you looked X eyed at him but the next time Shorty wants to kid somebody he better try it on some yapp that hasn’t been in the big league and I let him think he was stringing me just to see how far he would go with it but if he thought he had me fooled the shoes was on his feet not mine.

Well Al Sebastian’s name is just plain Nick without no Blade on it and the only blade he ever pulled was a blade of grass or something because he use to help take care of the grounds at Washington Pk. before he was drafted and he has been one of my admirers for a long while and that is why he kept looking at me and he says he use to always try and get to the games when it was my turn to pitch and he has been wanting to talk to me ever since we been here but today was the first time he got up the nerve and he never had no intentions of going on leave last Sat. and to prove it he showed me a letter he got from his wife last Friday and she don’t spell very good but she spoke in the letter about comeing here to see him this next Sunday and nothing about him comeing there to see her and she is going to bring their 2 kids along and he says he never seen a man with a prettier wind up then I got and all together he is O.K. and when Shorty trys to make you beleive somebody is a murder he ought to pick out a man that looks like the part.

I haven’t said nothing to Shorty and I won’t but what I will do is play a joke on him right back only I will make it a good one and not no fizzle like some of his.

And oh yes Al they have sent Castle over to the quarter masters dept. and he won’t have a chance to kill nobody there except when they come after a pair of shoes.

Your pal, jack.

[Illustration]

Camp Grant, Oct. 12.

FRIEND AL: Well old pal I am writeing this in the Y.M.C.A. where a man has got some chance to hear yourself think as they say but if you try and write over in the barracks if they don’t joggle your arm or tip your seat over for a joke they are all the time jabbering back and forth in foreign languages till you get so balled up that instead of writeing a letter a man is libel to make out his will in Eskimo or something.

Speaking about foreign languages Al the next time I see you I will be talking French like a regular Frenchman and you will have to ask me to translate what I am talking about.  Of course I am just jokeing about that because I wouldn’t spring a lot of stuff on you that you wouldn’t understand and I might just as well go up to a statue and ask them how their father stood his operation or something.  But what I am getting at is that I am going to join the French lesson class here and its something that you don’t have to belong to it unless you want