quay, some fishing, some looking idly at the
stream. And as the two boats shot in along the water, we could see them
pointing them out and speaking one to another. We landed at a floating
lavatory, where the washerwomen were still beating the clothes.

AT COMPIEGNE

We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiegne, where nobody observed
our presence.

Reservery and general _militarismus_ (as the Germans call it) were
rampant. A camp of conical white tents without the town looked like a
leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts decorated the walls of the
_cafes_, and the streets kept sounding all day long with military music.
It was not possible to be an Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation;
for the men who followed the drums were small, and walked shabbily. Each
man inclined at his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience, as he
went. There was nothing of the superb gait with which a regiment of tall
Highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a
natural phenomenon. Who that has seen it can forget the drum-major
pacing in front, the drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swinging plaids,
the strange elastic rhythm of the whole regiment footing it in time--and
the bang of the drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take
up the martial story in their place?

A girl, at school in France, began to describe one of our regiments on
parade to her French schoolmates, and as she went on, she told me, the
recollection grew so vivid, she became so proud to be the countrywoman
of such soldiers, and so sorry to be in another country, that her voice
failed her and she burst into tears. I have never forgotten that girl;
and I think she very nearly deserves a statue. To call her a young lady,
with all its niminy associations, would be to offer her an insult. She
may rest assured of one thing: although she never should marry a heroic
general, never see any great or immediate result of her life, she will
not have lived in vain for her native land.

But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, on the march
they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of fox-hunters. I remember
once seeing a company pass through the forest of Fontainebleau, on the
Chailly road, between the Bas Breau and the Reine Blanche. One fellow
walked a little before the rest, and sang a loud, audacious marching
song. The rest bestirred their feet, and even swung their muskets in
time. A young officer on h