ey lived just inside the village in a quaint old manor house I had
often admired), we would consider it an honor indeed to entertain
Monsieur le Chaplain and his friends," then naively adding, as if by way
of further inducement, "we have the only piano in the village."

Now Sergeant Eddie Quinlan, 55th Infantry, who came from South Carpenter
Street, Chicago, was one of my best pals. He was then attending the
Field Signal Battalion School at Shacereyelles, two kilometers away. I
sent word to him, directing him to report at my billet the following
evening accompanied by the ten handsomest doughboys, besides himself, in
his platoon. At the appointed hour and place, the Buddies were
faithfully on hand; and need I add, all were from Chicago? How proud I
was of them, stalwart huskies, well groomed, brown as berries, and with
muscles of iron.

"Fellows, if you have no other engagement for this evening, would you
care to accompany me to the Moidrey residence, honored guests of the
family? They have a piano; and I might add, a most charming daughter of
sixteen summers." Here they nearly mobbed me! "Would they go?" "Other
engagements!" "Say, Father, you are not kidding us, are you?" etc., etc!
By way of information permit me to here observe that these boys had been
sleeping in fields then for two weeks. They had not seen the inside of
an honest-to-goodness home, nor sat at a dining-table with real
tablecloth, napkins or plates, since they landed in France. Neither had
they heard a piano, nor been the guest of any lady, young or
old--well--since they left Camp Merritt. Their over-flowing cup of joy,
at this alluring prospect, can therefore easily be imagined.

As we no doubt would be invited to sing, we first rehearsed several
popular songs, holding forth with a gusto that raised the roof, even of
the ancient and sturdy house of Barnicault. To the air of "Old Kentucky
Home," Quinlan tried out our latest, A Song of Home:

You may sing of Erin's Shannon flowing softly to the sea,
The Thames where it passes London town;
You may boast the bonnie Clyde where it mingles with the tide,
And the Seine with its romance of renown.

You may paint in blue the Danube or the far Italian Po,
But of all the streams enshrined in memory,
Is the good old Mississippi, that wherever I may go,
Is the dearest one in all the world to me.

CHORUS:

Then sing the song, my comrades,
O we'll sing