“The friend’s address?” and so on:  where had Jimmie worked last, what work had he done, what references had he to offer.  Jimmie could not help grinning as he realized how his record must sound to a military martinet.  He had been discharged and blacklisted at the motor-truck factory in Ironton, his last job; he had been discharged and black-listed at the Empire Shops; he had been arrested and sent to jail for “soap-boxing” on the streets of Leesville; he had been arrested in the bomb-conspiracy of Kumme and Heinrich von Holst.  The sergeant entered each of these items without comment, but when he come to the last, he stared up at the applicant.

“I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it,” declared Jimmie.

“You got to prove that to me,” said the sergeant.

“I proved it once,” replied Jimmie.

“Who to?”

“Mr. Harrod, the agent of the Department of Justice here.”

The other took up the telephone and called the post office building.  Jimmie listened to one-half of the conversation—­would Mr. Harrod look up the record of James Higgins, who was applying for enlistment in the Mechanical Department of the Motor Corps?  There was some delay—­Mr. Harrod was talking—­while Jimmie sat, decidedly nervous; but it was all right apparently—­the sergeant hung up the receiver, and remarked reassuringly, “He says you’re just a dub.  He told me to congratulate you on having got some sense.”

Jimmie made the most of this more than dubious statement, and proceeded to answer questions as to his competence.  Was there anybody at the Empire who could certify as to this?  The sergeant was about to call up the Empire Shops, but reconsidered; if Jimmie had actually worked in a machine-shop and in a bicycle-shop, they would surely be able to find something for him in the army.  In an hour of such desperate need they took most everyone.  “How tall are you?” demanded the sergeant, and added, “Weight don’t matter so much, because we’ll feed you.”

The office of the medical examiner was upstairs in the same building, and Jimmie was escorted upstairs, and invited to remove his coat and shirt, and have his chest measured, and his heart and lungs listened to, and his teeth counted, and his nose peered into, and a score of such-like stunts.  He had things wrong with him, of course, but not too many for army purposes, it appeared.  The doctor jotted down the figures on a sheet and signed it, after which Jimmie and the soldier went back to the recruiting-office.

And now suddenly the little Socialist found himself with an enlistment paper before him, and a wet pen in his hand.  He had never once been asked:  “Is your mind made up?  Do you really mean to take this irrevocable step?” No, the sergeant had taken it for granted that Jimmie meant business.  He had done all this inquiring and writing down of information, this weighing and measuring and what not, and now he sat with a stern, compelling eye fixed on his victim, as much as to say:  “Do you mean to tell me that I’ve done all that for nothing?” If Jimmie had actually refused to sign his name, what a blast of scorn would have withered him!