carried around an autograph album, seeking
signatures from the celebrities. After a popular lecture a crowd
hastened to the platform and a hundred hands, each holding an album,
would be stretched out toward the speaker, demanding his autograph. Of
course every child, and nearly every grown-up, must have Frank Beard's
autograph, and with it a picture drawn by his hand. Frank said once in a
religious meeting that his idea of heaven was a place where there were
no autograph albums.

Every year at Chautauqua is held a National Army Day, when the Civil War
veterans from near and far assemble, wear their G. A. R. uniforms and
badges, and listen to an address in the Amphitheater. One year, I think
it was 1886, but I am not sure, the orator was late in coming, and Mr.
Beard, himself a veteran of the war, was called upon to fill the
vacancy. He told the story of "The Chaplain's Leg," of which some
incredulous people have doubted the authenticity. As I remember it was
somewhat as follows. He would come forward, slapping his right leg, and
saying:

That is a good leg, but it isn't mine. It belonged
once to the chaplain of our regiment; I was in a
battle and happened to have a tree between myself
and the whole rebel army. There was a change in
the front, and I started to make a detour to
another tree. Just in the middle of my march I ran
against the chaplain, who was also making a
detour, and at that moment came along a rebel
shell, which took off one of his legs and also one
of mine. We lay on the ground only a minute or
two, and then an ambulance took us and the two
legs on board. They carried us to the field
hospital, and put on our legs, which grew just as
they should, so that after a few weeks I was
dismissed as cured. Well, I had been a long time,
for me, without liquid refreshment, and I knew
that out in the woods near the camp was an
extemporized bar, in the shape of a board laid on
two stumps of trees. I found it hard to walk in
that direction, and had to pull my right leg
along; but I thought that it needed only a little
practice to be as good as ever. I got to the bar
and ordered a glass of something; it might have
been ginger-pop or it might have been something
else.