s too
misty to see the view."

But for his medals, there was nothing in the Governor to show
that he was not English. He might have come straight from an
Indian frontier command.

One notices this approximation of type in the higher ranks,
and many of the juniors are cut out of the very same cloth as
ours. They get whatever fun may be going: their performances
are as incredible and outrageous as the language in which they
describe them afterward is bald, but convincing, and--I
overheard the tail-end of a yarn told by a child of twenty to
some other babes. It was veiled in the obscurity of the
French tongue, and the points were lost in shouts of laughter
--but I imagine the subaltern among his equals displays just as
much reverence for his elders and betters as our own boys do.
The epilogue, at least, was as old as both Armies:

"And what did he say then?"

"Oh, the usual thing. He held his breath till I thought he'd
burst. Then he damned me in heaps, and I took good care to
keep out of his sight till next day."

But officially and in the high social atmosphere of
Headquarters their manners and their meekness are of the most
admirable. There they attend devoutly on the wisdom of their
seniors, who treat them, so it seemed, with affectionate
confidence.

FRONT THAT NEVER SLEEPS

When the day's reports are in, all along the front, there is a
man, expert in the meaning of things, who boils them down for
that cold official digest which tells us that "There was the
usual grenade fighting at------. We made appreciable advance
at------," &c. The original material comes in sheaves and
sheaves, where individual character and temperament have full
and amusing play. It is reduced for domestic consumption like
an overwhelming electric current. Otherwise we could not take
it in. But at closer range one realizes that the Front never
sleeps; never ceases from trying new ideas and weapons which,
so soon as the Boche thinks he has mastered them, are
discarded for newer annoyances and bewilderments.

"The Boche is above all things observant and imitative," said
one who counted quite a few Boches dead on the front of his
sector. "When you present him with a new idea, he thinks it
over for a day or two. Then he presents his riposte."

"Yes, my General. That was exactly what he did to me when I
--did so and so. He was quite silent for a day. Then--he stole
my patent."

"And you?"

"I had a notion that he'