And it seems these people hadn't been able to locate Jim anywheres,
either. At first that sounded sort of funny to me; but when I come to
think it over I realized about his nose, where the alligator had bit him
and the doctor had put on the brown stuff, from which he wouldn't
naturally care to be seen--only no one could say that it would prevent
him using the phone, which I also realized.

Well, after I eat a little liver and bacon, and so on, which Ma had
fixed for me, and cried some, which made me feel better again, I started
out for drill; which means that now comes the real important part of
what happened and the true measure of the tale, as the poet says.

Well, it seems we rookies--and I must pause to mention that I don't like
that word rookies; it sounds like something that would get the hook
amateur nights. Well, as I was saying, we rookies was told to report at
three o'clock for a private drill, all of our very own. But I was on to
the fact that the regular members in good standing would be there ahead
of us to do well what we was about to do badly. So I thought I would go
early and sit out in front, or whatever was the same thing, and try and
get a line on how it was done.

Believe you me, there ain't many steps I can't get by seeing them done
once; and if I was to of gone up to the Palace and watch Castle, or Rock
and White, or any one of them, when I come away I could do the steps
they pulled as good as if I had invented them!

Well, this was my idea in going up and seeing the ladies drill. So there
I was at the park bright and early on a fine sunny afternoon, with the
ladies all in uniform. But I wasn't in any too much time, for I'd no
sooner got there than a big roughneck of a feller--a regular U. S. drill
sergeant, I found out after--come up and yelled: "Fall in!" Just as rude
as any stage director I ever seen! But the ladies didn't seem to mind a
bit. They didn't fall into nothing though; they just hustled into line
and stood there.

"Ten-shun!" says the feller. And they all stood like a chorus when the
stage manager is telling them he is going to quit the show if they don't
learn no better, and they're a bunch of fatheads, and he's going to get
them fired. In other words, they stood perfectly still.

Well, after that it was something grand, what those ladies did. I will
say that when I come down to the park that afternoon I thought maybe I'd
see some pretty fair chorus work; you know--formations, a