like
Americans than anything else they've got over here--and they want to
trade off with us for some stuff. That's where the coat come from. This
red dicer"--pointing to the fez--"I copped off'n a nigger. Funny kind of
coon he was, too; couldn't talk English, only French; and we had to
teach him how to shoot crap!

"But we got three complete Uncle Sam uniforms, in three different sizes,
for the use of the whole outfit. Y'see, three men from our comp'ny get
leave in Paree every week, and they just nachhully got to look right
when they go down there. So they match, and the odd man has the pick of
the three suits, so's he can take the one that fits him. Then the other
two flip up, and the guy that don't call it has to take what's left.
Gen'rally he's outer luck.

"Look at this engine o' mine," continued the engineer, pointing to the
big Baldwin locomotive beside him. "Is't she a pippin, though? These
little French ones look like fleas up alongside an elephant aside of
her. They're forty-five like her in the same lot, bought by the French
for $45,000 a throw, and turned out at the works in Philly in twenty
days. They're owned by the French now, but they've got the good old
'U.S.A.' right up there on the water-tender. See it?" He obliged with
his flashlight. "Pull? They can handle 166,000 pounds without batting an
eye!

Misses the Old Bell.

"Only trouble is," he explained, "we haven't got any spare parts for
her, not even spare valves, she was rushed over here in such a hurry.
But at that, she's got it over anything that ever sailed over this line
before. Why, when we first got here some of the French lines were using
old engines that had been made in Germany in 1856. 'Sfact! One of ours,
like Big Lizzie here, can do the work of three of the little fellers;
and, while I'm not the one to say it, perhaps, our regiment has done the
work of an outfit two and a half times as big since it came here.

"Climb up alongside of me in the cab," the engineer invited, "and we'll
give her a pull up the line to the next station." The reporter complied,
and soon his ears were startled with the long blast of a real American
whistle. "Sounds like the real thing, doesn't it?" beamed his guide.
"Beats those little peanut whistles they've got on the little French
dinkeys. Only thing the boys miss is pulling the old bell, but they
can't do it here. Bells in this country are only used for church and for
gas alarms. An