The Columbus Journal

NOT LIKE ROMANCE.

THE 'SOLDIER OF FORTUNE' IN REAL LIFE.

Differs in Many Material Respects from the Heroes Who Figure Prominently in the Pages of Novelists.

Richard Harding Davis and other writers of lesser note have cast a glamour over the title, 'Soldier of Fortune,' which possibly applies to certain victims of wanderlust and love of unusual adventure, but which is a horrible misfit to the only individual the writer ever knew whose many adventures by field and flood, and beneath a half-dozen flags, properly placed him in the class of Capt. Macklin, Red Saunders and others known to readers of fiction, says a writer in the Atchison Globe. Sami Chalmers was the name our soldier of fortune gave to those who asked. Incidentally, he was the homeliest man we ever met—a large, slouching, loose-jointed creature, who looked half man and half gorilla. His feet and hands were too large for his big body and he handled both as if they were something of a burden. He was dish-faced, had bleary eyes and the complexion of a tan shoe after you have worn it through dewy grass.

Chalmers always dirty and usually drunk—a man without a visible redeeming personal feature and little mental attraction. But he had accomplishments; he knew enough of the sea to make it carry him where he would, and, perhaps, something more. He could speak several languages and a half-dozen native dialects, including that of New York's East side (the hardest to understand), where he claimed to have originated at some indefinite date in the past. He seemed to have a knowledge of all the ports of all the seven seas and could, when he would, tell interesting tales of fighting Zulus in South Africa, bushmen in Australia, pirates off the China coast and several other strange and unpleasant creatures in other outlandish places.

Americans found him in an isolated Filipino stronghold on the island of Leyte, and he said he had been taken prisoner when he came ashore from a hemp ship. The natives said he had been a captain of the insurgent army, and perhaps he had, although he denied it for obvious reasons. At any rate, he wasn't an officer with them for patriotism or love, for he turned American scout and fought them with a lust for blood amounting to savagery. He was brave, as the bulldog is because it knows no better—which seemed to be his only trait in common with the other soldiers of fortune of whom we have read.

Later we met him as second mate on a wind jammer at Nagasaki. The sea was home to Chalmers and he only quit it occasionally to find a fight and a more convenient place to get drunk. Had Chalmers turned to the land instead of the sea in his earlier years he would have ended as only a common tramp. As it was, he is a tramp, but of a more uncommon kind. It is the tramp instinct which makes soldiers of fortune, although, perhaps, some of them, more fortunate, do wear immaculate white duck suits and pith helmets. But the only one we ever met was not very 'classy' and he kind of shook our faith in Capt. Macklin.