But even the Army waxed tame for Lufbery, and when his term of enlistment expired he was ready and eager to nose out what the still strange parts of the world had to offer him. He sailed for Japan, sampled the beauties and novelties of that country and then dipped into China. From China he went into India. A characteristic anecdote is told of him as ticket-seller in one of the railway stations of India. It has been said that he sustained himself with any kind of odd job as he roamed the world, and ticket-selling was one of the tedious sort of occupations least to his liking. A pompous type of native one day stood at the wicket. “Want a ticket?” Lufbery asked. “Say ‘Sir’ when you speak to me,” said the native, loftily. THE PRICE OF A JOB With never a wink, Lufbery left his place, approached the offended person, took him by the back of the neck and with neatness and dispatch ejected him from the station. Under English civil law one is promptly summoned for assault, and as the person Lufbery had treated so summarily in accord with his own ideas of fitness chanced to be the richest and most influential merchant of Bombay, the summons cost the ticket-seller his place. Cochin-China was his resort, Saigon his haven, and there, if you please, he viewed with envious admiration the aerial antics of Marc Pourpe, the famous trick flyer. There came a day when Pourpe lost his mechanic, and his exhibitions came to a stop while he made vain quest among the natives for a substitute. None cared for the office, preferring infinitely the understood foundation of Mother Earth to antics in the air. Quite right—Lufbery applied for the job. Was he a mechanic? No. Did he know anything about an aeroplane motor? Not a thing. “Why the deuce, then, do you come bothering me?” demanded the irritated Pourpe. “I don’t know the job now,” Lufbery said, “but I can learn. You only have to show me once. Take me on. You won’t regret it. I’m not afraid of work.” Marc Pourpe is quoted as saying to some friends later in relating the incident: “His reasoning was full of logic. His method was original. I agreed, and I will say that never have I seen a person more devoted, more intelligent and more useful. He is already better informed about a motor than most of the so-called mechanics of Paris. Moreover, this boy has hung his hat in every country in the world. He is not a man, he is an encyclopedia. He can tell you what the weather is in a given season in Japan, in Egypt, in America, or in France. He observes everything and once he has noticed it, it is engraved on his memory. “He told me that in all his travels he had never been more than a week without working. He was hospital interne at Cairo, a stevedore in Calcutta, station master in India, a soldier in America. I am glad he is now a mechanic.