ose of writing back home to their favorite paper, or
to their wives or sweethearts, of how near they were to getting killed;
of how the bombs fell just a few minutes before or just a few minutes
after they were "on that very spot"; of how the raid came the very
night after they were in London or Paris; of how just after they had
walked along a certain street the Big Bertha had dropped a shell there;
of how the night after they had slept in a certain hotel down in Nancy
the Germans blew it up. We're all alike the first week, and staid war
correspondents are no exception to the rule. It gets them all.

I came on my friend telling this crowd of eager new secretaries of the
damage that the Gothas had done the night before. There they stood in
a corner of the hotel with open ears, eyes, and mouths. Most of them
were on their toes ready to make a break for their rooms and get all
the horrible details down in their letters home and their diaries
before it escaped them. They were torn between a fear that they would
forget some of the horrid details and for fear some other fellow would
get the big story back home to the local paper before they could get it
there. When I came in, this nonchalant narrator was having the time of
his young life. He was revelling in description. Color and fire and
blood and ruin and desecration flowed from his eloquent lips like water
over Niagara.

When I got close enough to hear, he was at his most climactic and last
period of eloquence. He made a gesture with one hand, waving it
gracefully into the air full length, with these words: "Why, gentlemen,
I didn't see anything worse at the San Francisco earthquake."

In three seconds that crowd had disappeared, each to his own letter,
and each to his own diary. Not a detail must escape. How wonderful it
would be to describe that awful destruction, and say at the end of the
letter: "And this happened just the night before we reached Paris."

Only the vivid artist of description and myself remained in the hotel
lobby, and having heard him mention San Francisco, my own home, I was
naturally curious and wanted to talk a bit over old times, so I went up
to the gentleman and said: "I heard you say to that gang that you
hadn't seen anything worse at the San Francisco earthquake, so I
thought I'd have a chat about San Francisco with you."

"Why, I was never in San Francisco in my life," he said with a grin.

"But you said to those boys, 'I didn'