The Weber Literary Journal but still didn't dare look directly at the audience. Nevertheless, I talked more fluently and gestured more naturally after that. I stretched out on the sofa, I put myself into the part, I was myself all except that I didn't dare look at the audience. And then the time came that I must press my wife to my husbandly bosom and kiss her. As I thought about it I grew a little more nervous. I wondered if, as she rushed upon me, I should stagger against her onslaught. I determined that I wouldn't, but that old tenseness came back. I waited. At last she came. "Jack," she cried and rushed at me, reminding me of nothing less than a rushing locomotive. I caught her in my arms, of course, and swung her around onto her own feet. I began to feel easy. I went to kiss her, and she turned her head. I was relieved, and yet I felt so foolish I would have liked to choke her. After that the tenseness gradually receded until I could take my part naturally again. So, throughout the second act, I danced and laughed and moaned, quite as I had at rehearsals. However, I could not bring myself to look at the audience. During the intermission between the second and third acts, I helped shift scenery, which made me all the more natural and unaffected. Then, a moment before the curtain went up I went suddenly empty again. "Where on earth is my ladder?" I called in anguish. The third act would be useless without that ladder; I must find it. With so much depending on me I again became nervous and excited, running frantically about, searching, asking. Then one of the fellows came to my rescue, bringing with him a small ladder; it was only a yard high, it is true, but it was a ladder, nevertheless. My fear died away as the curtain rose. Almost time for my cue, I discovered that I still wore the Turkish fez I had worn in the two preceding acts; and this was an outdoor scene. Ensued a frantic search for my hat, which was presently brought to light resting serenely under a pile of scenery. Thus, panting, flurried, torn between fear, tenseness and my will to be natural, I finished the play. Yet, at the very end, when I had regained my composure, I tried to look the audience in the face and failed. 10 The Weber Literary Journal Sherm Powell L. W. Overstreet HERM POWELL had never taken kindly to army life. Up to two years ago he had been as free from work and worry and responsibility as a hound-dog. Then he had listened to the siren song of a recruiting sergeant from Memphis, a smooth-tongued rascal who knew how to take advantage of country niggers. Sherm hadn't a chance. The bait was irresistible grand blue uniform with brass buttons; sumptuous meals at regular and frequent intervals; no work except for a little drilling; hot stove to sleep by in the winter-time; furloughs in abundance; kindly northern gentlemen for officers, gentlemen who treat black boys like brothers. Sherm had seized this marvelous opportunity as eagerly as a small boy accepts a pass to the circus. From his very first day in the barracks, things had begun to go wrong for Sherm. Strolling about the parade grounds with the recruiting officer's brotherhood-of-man idea in mind, and craving conversation, he had plucked with timid thumb and forefinger at a golden oak-leaf on the shoulder of a fellow trooper. "Please suh, wha'bouts you git 'em gol' buttons?" The surprise which had followed! The major had absolutely no sense of humor, but his vocabulary was forceful and adequate. His eyes would have taken all the self-respect out of a whole regiment of black boys. Things had gone from bad to worse. "Rise and shine," "Snap out of it, you black unmentionables" ... at five-thirty in the morning when Sherm was "jus' gittin' asleep right good." Drilling and hiking and fatigue-duty. Those hard-boiled high-brow sergeants wouldn't let a boy alone five minutes. Then, "lights out" when an absorbing crap game was just getting into full swing! Salt pork, bully beef, canned tomatoes, beans, and molasses that tasted like glue what a diet after a life-time of "cawn-pone," smoked ham, fresh pork, catfish, yellow yams, and "so'ghum mo-lasses!" Then had come a night when all Sherm's grievances and disillusionments had seemed paid up in full. He got a pass to town. His magic uniform gave him a high place in society of a sort. Red liquor 11