The troops wore flowers in their helmets, and had written on the car
sides "To St. Petersburg," but they could not raise a single "Hoch!"
among them.
The wounded continue to pour into Ghent. The town council is so
pressed for money it has imposed taxes on beer, fuel, petroleum, and
yeast.
WHIPPED FOR ROBBING GIRL.
When the Cossacks raided Ropezica, according to the Cracow _Nova
Reforma_, they robbed the house in which a Polish girl was
housekeeper. The girl hurried to the commander of the Cossacks, who
lived at a hotel.
"I told him my trouble," she said, "whereupon he asked me: 'Are you
a Pole or a Jew?' I replied that I was a Pole. 'Well, then, I shall
go and see these fellows myself.'
"He took a nagaika (whip) and accompanied me to the house of my
employer.
"Then he called to the Cossacks, who had in the meantime broken open
a trunk and were just in the act of taking various things away, to
come upstairs and showed every one what position he was to take,
after which he whipped their faces and chests until they began to
bleed. I screamed with horror. He repeated the procedure. Then he
asked me:
"'Do you want these fellows shot?' to which I naturally answered
'No.'
"Thereupon he took the Cossacks to a room, where he whipped them
once more.
"In the evening he sent for me, and asked me what articles had been
ruined and what stolen, whereupon he commanded the Cossacks to
return all articles they had stolen. In order to prevent another
theft, he gave me a Cossack, who watched the house until the next
morning. What would have been the fate of the house had I been a
Jewess I dare not imagine."
THE CORPORAL'S TROPHY.
Here is a little incident of the daily life of General Pau, a hero
of the Franco-Prussian war, in which he lost an arm:
A dozen French infantrymen, mud-begrimed, were resting in a
drizzling rain on the wayside under the dripping trees. The Corporal
sits and tries in vain to light his pipe, at intervals singing
lustily.
Suddenly the Corporal stands erect; his pipe is hidden behind his
back, and he makes a hasty salute. Through the fog and rain one of
the three great leaders of the French army has appeared.
"Why do you not wear your cap?" asks General Pau.
"I have lost my cap, General."
"Where did you lose it?"
"When we were attacked in the woods this morning. A branch knocked
it off, and I was too much in a hurry to go back and get it. It is
gone."
"Take my cap."
The Corporal fears the end of things; he will be punished for losing
his cap.
"Take it, I tell you, and wear it," says the General.
And the humble Corporal does as he is told and becomes resplendent,
like the sun in the cap, emblazoned with the glorious, golden oak
leaves. The General draws rein and canters away.
Since that day the Corporal marches along the country roads to the
frontier, proudly wearing the cap of General Pau.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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