From Place to PlaceCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
From Place to Place
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Fiction; Short stories
In the same week of November that the armistice was signed, Ginsburg,
limping slightly, went aboard a troopship bound for home. It befell,
therefore, that he spent the winter on sick leave in New York. He had
plenty of spare time on his hands and some of it he employed in business
of a more or less private nature. For example, he called on the district
attorney and a few days later went to Albany and called upon the
governor. A returned soldier whose name has been often in the paper and
who wears on his uniform tunic two bits of ribbon and on his sleeves
service and wound stripes is not kept waiting in anterooms these times.
He saw the governor just as he had seen the district attorney--promptly.
In fact, the governor felt it to be an honour to meet a soldier who had
been decorated for gallantry in action and so expressed himself. Later
he called in the reporters and restated the fact; but when one of the
reporters inquired into the reasons for Sergeant Ginsburg's visit at
this time the governor shook his head.
"The business between us was confidential," he said smilingly. "But I
might add that Sergeant Ginsburg got what he came for. And it wasn't a
job either. I'm afraid, though, that you young gentlemen will have to
wait a while for the rest of the details. They'll come out in time no
doubt. But just for the present a sort of surprise is being planned for
someone and while I'm to be a party to it I don't feel at liberty to
tell about it--yet."
* * * * *
Now it is a part of the business of newspaper men to put two and two
together and get four. Months later, recalling what the governor had
said to the Albany correspondents, divers city editors with the aid of
their bright young staff men did put two and two together and they got a
story. It was a peach of a bird of a gem of a story that they got on the
day a transport nosed up the harbour bearing what was left of one of the
infantry regiments of the praiseworthy Metropolitan Division.
Even in those days of regardless receptions for home-arriving troops it
did not often happen that a secretary to the governor and an assistant
from the office of the district attorney went down the bay on the same
tug to meet the same returning soldier--and he a private soldier at
that. Each of these gentlemen had put on his long-tailed coat and his
two-quart hat for the gladsome occasion; each of them carried a document
for personal presentation to this private soldier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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