Try going seven days on pokeberry ink and boiled coffee yourself and note the reaction.  Your veins will be dry; your stomach will crackle as it grinds the food.  The water in that bottle, a quart bottle, evaporated.  They brought another.  It disappeared.  They brought a third.  The waiters in the hotel were attracted by the sight.  No Frenchman ever drinks water with his meals, and the spectacle of this American sousing himself with water while he ate was a rare sight.  The waiters gathered in the corner to watch me.  Henry saw them, and motioned toward me, and tapped his forehead.  They went and brought other waiters and men from the bar.  He was a rare bird; this American going on a big drunk on water.  So they peered in doors, through windows and stood in the diningroom corners to watch the fourth bottle go down.  And when at the end of the meal the American rose, and walked through the crowd, they made way for him.  A desperate man at least commands respect, whatever his delusion may be.

And that night we left the French front, and nosed our car toward Paris.

There we made preparations to go to the headquarters of the American Army.  In Paris also we got into our new regulation Red Cross uniforms.  Ever since man first pinned a buffalo tail to the back of his belt, and stuck a rooster feather in his matted hair, he has been proud of his uniform.  Sex vanity expresses itself most gorgeously in a uniform, and when they put Henry and me into uniforms, even carefully repressed Red Cross uniforms, open at the neck and with blue dabs on our coat lapels to distinguish us from the “first class fighting man,” we were so proud that often five or six consecutive minutes passed when we weren’t afraid of what our wives would say about the $124 each had spent for the togs.  At times our attitude toward our wives was not unlike that of drunken rabbits hunting brazenly for the dogs!  But when we slipped into citizen clothes, sobriety and remorse covered us, and we shook sad heads.  We wore the uniforms little about Paris; for our Sam Browne belts kept us returning salutes until our arms hurt.  They couldn’t break me of the habit of saluting with a newspaper or a package or a pencil in my hand.  And my return of the interminable round of salutes from French, British, and Italian soldiers who throng Paris, probably insulted—­all unbeknownst to me—­hundreds of our allies, and made them sneer at our flag.  So it seemed best for us to wear these uniforms only where soldiers congregated who would know us for the gawks that we were and forgive us our military trespasses.  Then a real day came when our Red Cross duties took us to General Pershing’s headquarters.

[Illustration:  He was a rare bird; this American going on a big drunk on water]