the Americans within fancied Spaniards, or Greeks, or Roumanians
must understand because they were not English noises; still we
pounced upon the paid as upon a tackling-dummy in the early days
of spring practice.

The colossal wonder of it all was how these deep-chested, muscle-
knotted fellows endured us, how they refrained from taking us up
between a thumb and forefinger and dropping us over the veranda
railing. For our attack lacked somewhat in gentle courtesy,
notably so that of "the Rowdy." He was a chestless youth of the
type that has grown so painfully prevalent in our land since the
soft-hearted abolishment of the beech-rod of revered memory; of
that all too familiar type whose proofs of manhood are cigarettes
and impudence and discordant noise, and whose national superiority
is demonstrated by the maltreating of all other races. But the
enrolled were all, black, white, or mixed, far more gentlemen than
we. Some, of brief Zone experience, were sheepish with fear and
the wonder as to what new mandate this incomprehensible U. S. was
perpetrating to match its strange sanitary laws that forbade a man
even to be uncleanly in his habits, after the good old sacred
right of his ancestors to remotest ages. Then, too, there was a
Zone policeman in dressy, new-starched khaki treading with
dangling club and the icy-eye of public appearance, waiting all
too eagerly for some one to "start something." But the great
percentage of the maltreated multitude were "Old Timers," men of
four or five years of digging who had learned to know this strange
creature, the American, and the world, too; who smiled indulgently
down upon our yelping and yanking like a St. Bernard above the
snapping puppy he well knows cannot seriously bite him.