Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 98: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

By J. C. IHE gentlemen of Congress are more prone to bend their distinguished thoughts to the framing of laws and tariffs than to the nurturing of sentiment, but there are times when sheer idealism rules their council chambers. Witness the burst of enthusiasm that marked the passage of the act to station buglers at the cemetery in Belleau Wood—buglers, who, every night at sunset, would stand with heels clapped together, and send the wistful note of “taps ” winnowing over the endless row of crosses. It was a monument to the dead, and to the unforgetfulness of the living; a monu- ment more appealing to the imagination than placid marble. It was a triumph of sentiment. At least, the press was unani- mous in that belief. The men chosen for the post were Ser-_ geant Buglers Whelen and McCarty—and Whelen had hated McCarty since he was a little shaver, scrabbling about in the grime of Peregrine Street! Larry Whelen had been born without the 88 KOFOED gift of laughter, and so they nicknamed him ‘““Sadface.” There were hollows under his cheek bones; his lips sagged at the corners; there was a doleful light in his pale eyes. From nostril wing to ear was a white seam that had been made by the bayonet of a Prussian guardsman, The build of him was long and flat, on the general architecture of a slat, but there was unsuspected muscle and sinew laid along his bones. He was one of the old breed of regulars, with half a dozen “ hash ” marks on his sleeves, and a line of Chinese, and European service ribbons adding a touch of color to the breast of his service blouse. McCarty was shorter, thick shouldered, with eyes as blue as the heart of a flame. Where Whelen’s lips were downdrawn with the sorrow of living, his were upturned with the joy of it. As boys in Peregrine Street they had fought times without number, and more than once Sadface—who was stronger than his chubby foe—had seen McCarty’s back in flight. So Whelen dubbed him coward, MICLOOKS (S@) (©)