ted. The
homes of France were ever thrown open to us, and the sincere and simple
good-will with which we were received has put us under a lasting debt
which we should be only too glad to cherish and acknowledge.

Saumur is a delightful old town in the heart of the chateau country. The
river Loire runs through it, and along the banks are the caves in some of
which have been found the paintings made by prehistoric man picturing the
beasts with which he struggled for supremacy in the dim dark ages. The
same caves are many of them inhabited, and their owners may well look with
scorn upon the chateaux and baronial castles of whose antiquity it is
customary to boast. There is an impressive castle built on a hill
dominating the town, and in one of the churches is hung an array of
tapestries of unsurpassed color and design. The country round about
invited rambling, and the excellent roads made it easy; particularly
delightful were the strolls along the river-banks, where patient
fisherfolk of every sex and age sat unperturbed by the fact that they
never seemed to catch anything. One old lady with a sunbonnet was always
to be seen seated on a three-legged stool in the same corner amid the
rocks. She had a rusty black umbrella which she would open when the rays
of the sun became too searching.

The buildings which were provided for the artillery course had formerly
been used by the cavalry school, probably the best known in the world.
Before the war army officers of every important nation in the Occident and
Orient were sent by their governments to follow the course and learn the
method of instruction. My old friend Fitzhugh Lee was one of those sent by
the United States, and I found his record as a horseman still alive and
fresh in the memory of many of the townspeople.

Soon after the termination of my period of instruction I was in command of
C Battery of the Seventh Field Artillery in the Argonne fighting. I was
standing one morning in the desolate, shell-ridden town of Landres et St.
George watching a column of "dough-boys" coming up the road; at their head
limped a battered Dodge car, and as it neared me I recognized my elder
brother Ted, sitting on the back seat in deep discussion with his
adjutant. I had believed him to be safely at the staff school in Langres
recuperating from a wound, but he had been offered the chance to come up
in command of his old regiment, the Twenty-Sixth, and although registered
as only "good f