Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER II WHEN a republic more grateful than the proverb has called its kind enacted the Invalid Pension Law, by the provisions of which every veteran of the war who could show a disability due to his service was entitled to pay from the day of his discharge, not unnaturally there ensued an overhauling of disabilities throughout the land. Now Bill Harbaugh, as it happened, had not about him a scrap of documentary proof that he had been in the army. Furthermore, he couldn't recall the number of his regiment or the letter of his company, or the name of a single officer of either; nor could he describe any engagement in which he had participated in such wise as to identify it. As for the leaders whom fame had made immortal, he thought he had heard of Grant, though he wasn't sure, and if hard pressed he recalled a Pap Thompson who might have been Pap Thomas; but Lincoln was no more to him than Leonidas, and Sherman likewise, and all the rest—none was so illustrious as to have found even a precarious lodgement in his memory. Bill's memory, to tell the truth, was far and away the weakest of his weakfaculties—pretty much a blank under any test. He could tell two war stories, and only two; ram- blingly enough, yet with sufficient uniformity to vouch for their substantial verity. One was about his detachment having been loaded into cattle- cars for transportation—he couldn't say where, or whither they were going—whereby they were affronted and cut up, and by way of manifesting their disapproval pulled out the coupling-pins so that the train couldn't start. "Cap'n he was bilin' mad, but jes's soon's he'd open his head we'd all blat like cattle!" related Bill, and that was the point and culmination of the tale. Asked how the difficulty was adjusted, or whether the train ever succeeded in starting, he couldn'...