From time to time I had heard from him in the years that followed, and one day in the summer of 1917 he wrote me that he was on the way to France. While I gazed up and down the smoke-laden platform, I got a slap on the shoulder that sent me spinning, and there was the once emaciated Bill, who seemed to have grown three inches and to have put on seventy-five pounds. As we walked toward the taxicab stand I began to realize that instead of an old friend, a stranger was beside me. True enough, he had the same name and the same colored eyes, and his hair hadn't changed. But the rather dreamy eye had cleared, the pale face of old was tanned, and Bill's chest--the one he had gone to Colorado for--was bulging out as he carried my two heavy suit cases like a pouter pigeon's at a poultry show. What had happened to Bill? The little, quiet, timid youth of the past was now a big, burly, strong-bodied, clear-minded man. As we entered the taxi he was telling me that he "intended to raise hell if they didn't take some action against this blank Bolshevism, and furthermore that this new Legion was going to be the most tremendous organization that the U.S.A. had ever seen." If he had told me that Swinburne's _Faustine_ was written in iambic hexameter it would have sounded more like old times. But here was a new man, strong and virile, intensely interested in the future of his nation. What had happened to Bill? Eighteen months in the army was the answer. The advanced delegation began to arrive in St. Louis, the afternoon of May 5th. The Statler and Jefferson Hotels were packed because there were two other conventions in progress. But our delegates needed no badge to be distinguished from the others; there was a difference between them and the other conventionites. There was the same difference between the two as between the old Bill and the new Bill. They too had had eighteen months in the army, and a coat of tan on each one's face, his ruddy frame, and general atmosphere of a healthy mind and a healthy body were unmistakable emblems.