it. He said that he had come all the
way from Boston to see a battle, and when I remained firm in my
refusal to take him to the front he intimated quite plainly that I was
no gentleman and that nothing would give him greater pleasure than
to have a shell explode in my immediate vicinity.

For all its grimness, the war was productive of more than one
amusing episode. I remember a mysterious stranger who called one
morning on the American Consul at Ostend to ask for assistance in
getting through to Brussels. When the Consul asked him to be
seated he bowed stiffly and declined, and when a seat was again
urged upon him he explained, in a hoarse whisper, that sewn in his
trousers were two thousand pounds in bank-notes which he was
taking through to Brussels for the relief of stranded English and
Americans--hence he couldn't very well sit down.

Of all the horde of adventurous characters who were drawn to the
Continent on the outbreak of war as iron-filings are attracted by a
magnet, I doubt if there was a more picturesque figure than a little
photographer from Kansas named Donald Thompson. I met him
first while paying a flying visit to Ostend. He blew into the Consulate
there wearing an American army shirt, a pair of British officer's
riding-breeches, French puttees and a Highlander's forage-cap, and
carrying a camera the size of a parlour-phonograph. No one but an
American could have accomplished what he had, and no American
but one from Kansas. He had not only seen war, all military
prohibitions to the contrary, but he had actually photographed it.

Thompson is a little man, built like Harry Lauder; hard as nails,
tough as raw hide, his skin tanned to the colour of a well-smoked
meerschaum, and his face perpetually wreathed in what he called
his "sunflower smile." He affects riding-breeches and leather
leggings and looks, physically as well as sartorially, as though he
had been born on horseback. He has more chilled steel nerve than
any man I know, and before he had been in Belgium a month his
name became a synonym throughout the army for coolness and
daring. He reached Europe on a tramp-steamer with an overcoat, a
toothbrush, two clean handkerchiefs, and three large cameras. He
expected to have some of them confiscated or broken, he
explained, so he brought along three as a measure of precaution.
His cameras were the largest size made. "By using a big camera no
one can possibly accuse me of being a spy," he explained