[Illustration: _Sailor_ (_rebuking pessimist_). "O' COURSE SOME O'
THEM U-BOATS GETS AWAY. WOT D'YER THINK WE 'UNT 'EM WITH? FILTERS?"]

* * * * *

THE GENTLEST ART.

Private Elijah Tiddy looked at his watch. There was still half-an-hour
to the great moment for which the battalion had waited so long. Most
of the men had decided to fill up the time by eating, drinking or
sleeping, but Private Tiddy had two other passions in life--one was
his wife, and the other the gentle art of letter-writing. At all
possible and impossible moments Private Tiddy wrote letters home. To
some men this would have been an impossible moment--not so to Tiddy,
who, if he hadn't been first a plumber and then a soldier, would have
made an inimitable journalist.

So he sat down as best he could with all that he carried, and
extracted a letter-case from an inside pocket. It was a recent gift
from the minister of his parish, who knew and shared Tiddy's weakness
for the pen, and it filled his soul with joy. He fingered the thin
sheets of writing-paper lovingly, as a musician touches the strings,
and thoughtfully sucked the indelible pencil which Mrs. Tiddy had
bought for him as a parting present when she said good-bye to him at
the bookstall.

"Dearest Wife," he began. Then at a shout he hastily drew in his feet
as a man dashed past him with a heavy burden. "I nearly got it in the
neck a minute ago," he wrote, "but I'm all right, and this is a fine
place if it wasn't for the noise. They never seem to stop screeching