wns land. Papa Blaire
was a small farmer in La Brie. Barque, porter and messenger, performed
acrobatic tricks with his carrier-tricycle among the trains and taxis
of Paris, with solemn abuse (so they say) for the pedestrians, fleeing
like bewildered hens across the big streets and squares. Corporal
Bertrand, who keeps himself always a little aloof, correct, erect, and
silent, with a strong and handsome face and forthright gaze, was
foreman in a case-factory. Tirloir daubed carts with paint--and without
grumbling, they say. Tulacque was barman at the Throne Tavern in the
suburbs; and Eudore of the pale and pleasant face kept a roadside cafe
not very far from the front lines. It has been ill-used by the
shells--naturally, for we all know that Eudore has no luck. Mesnil
Andre, who still retains a trace of well-kept distinction, sold
bicarbonate and infallible remedies at his pharmacy in a Grande Place.
His brother Joseph was selling papers and illustrated story-books in a
station on the State Railways at the same time that, in far-off Lyons,
Cocon, the man of spectacles and statistics, dressed in a black smock,
busied himself behind the counters of an ironmongery, his hands
glittering with plumbago; while the lamps of Becuwe Adolphe and
Poterloo, risen with the dawn, trailed about the coalpits of the North
like weakling Will-o'-th'-wisps.

And there are others amongst us whose occupations one can never recall,
whom one confuses with one another; and the rural nondescripts who
peddled ten trades at once in their packs, without counting the dubious
Pepin, who can have had none at all. (While at the depot after sick
leave, three months ago, they say, he got married--to secure the
separation allowance.)

The liberal professions are not represented among those around me. Some
teachers are subalterns in the company or Red Cross men. In the
regiment a Marist Brother is sergeant in the Service de Sante; a
professional tenor is cyclist dispatch-rider to the Major; a "gentleman
of independent means" is mess corporal to the C.H.R. But here there is
nothing of all that. We are fighting men, we others, and we include
hardly any intellectuals, or men of the arts or of wealth, who during
this war will have risked their faces only at the loopholes, unless in
passing by, or under gold-laced caps.

Yes, we are truly and deeply different from each other. But we are
alike all the same. In spite of this diversity of age, of country, of
edu