arl
in uniform!

But it had not subdued a single one of his characteristics. His hair
had been cropped a little more closely under his cap, but there was its
color and woolliness still intact; his plump figure was girt by belt and
buttons, but he only looked the more unreal, and more like a combination
of pen-wiper and pincushion, until his puffy breast and shoulders seemed
to offer a positive invitation to any one who had picked up a pin. But,
wonderful!--according to his brief story--he had been so proficient
in the goose step that he had been put in uniform already, and allowed
certain small privileges,--among them, evidently the present one.
The consul smiled and passed on. But it seemed strange to him that
Trudschen, who was a tall strapping girl, exceedingly popular with
the military, and who had never looked lower than a corporal at least,
should accept the attentions of an Einjahriger like that. Later he
interrogated her.

Ach! it was only Unser Karl! And the consul knew he was Amerikanisch!

"Indeed!"

"Yes! It was such a tearful story!"

"Tell me what it is," said the consul, with a faint hope that Karl had
volunteered some communication of his past.

"Ach Gott! There in America he was a man, and could 'vote,' make laws,
and, God willing, become a town councilor,--or Ober Intendant,--and
here he was nothing but a soldier for years. And this America was a
fine country. Wunderschon? There were such big cities, and one
'Booflo'--could hold all Schlachtstadt, and had of people five hundred
thousand!"

The consul sighed. Karl had evidently not yet got off the line of the
New York Central and Erie roads. "But does he remember yet what he did
with his papers?" said the consul persuasively.

"Ach! What does he want with PAPERS when he could make the laws? They
were dumb, stupid things--these papers--to him."

"But his appetite remains good, I hope?" suggested the consul.

This closed the conversation, although Karl came on many other nights,
and his toy figure quite supplanted the tall corporal of hussars in the
remote shadows of the hall. One night, however, the consul returned home
from a visit to a neighboring town a day earlier than he was expected.
As he neared his house he was a little surprised to find the windows of
his sitting-room lit up, and that there were no signs of Trudschen in
the lower hall or passages. He made his way upstairs in the dark and
pushed open the door of his apartment. To his