in the whole place—not a grouse. They are doing no grousing—your boys
there. When they see you they just say, “Cheerio.”

A friend of mine, a minister, went to see one of these boys, and he was
wondering what he could say to him; he thought he had got to cheer him up.
The boy looked at the padre and said,

“Guv’nor, don’t get down-hearted. I am going to make money out of this
job. Why, I shall only want a pair of trousers with one leg, and I shall
only want a coat with one sleeve, and I shall only want a pair of boots
with one boot.”

It reminds me of the question I once asked: “Sonny, what struck you most
when you got in the trenches?” and the reply came sharp,

“A bit of shrapnel.”

Another of your boys, just picked up in the trenches by those tender
fellows, the stretcher-bearers, those men with the hands of a woman and
with the heart of a mother—God bless them!—called out as they came to him,
“_Home, John_.” And when he was passing the officer and they were carrying
him into the Red Cross train, he cried, “_Season_.” He had two gold
stripes already. That’s the spirit of your boys.

* * * * *

There was a dear old Scotchman from Aberdeen. A telegram had come to that
granite city to say that his boy was badly wounded, and he ran all the way
to the station and jumped into a train without stopping to put on a
collar. You don’t think of collars when your boys are dying. I saw him