they were too hot and so cook put them on the edge of the trench to cool off. Just then the Germans let go some shells and one hit that pot square. And it didn’t do anything to those beans. Honestly, ma’am, it simply rained beans for an hour!”
THE MESSAGE WAS SOBER, ANYHOW
General Sir Henry Rawlinson, Sir Douglas Haig’s “right-hand man,” is rather fond of relating a story concerning a major who, sent to inspect an outlying fort, found the commander intoxicated. He immediately locked him up; but the bibulous one managed to escape, and, making his way to the nearest telegraph office, dispatched the following message to no less a personage than the colonial secretary: “Man here, named – , questions my sobriety. Wire to avert bloodshed.”
HE HADN’T FINISHED
They had brought him in very carefully, the husky but femininely gentle stretcher bearers, for he was nothing but a kid after all, with a complexion like a girl’s and with pathetically pleading eyes. He was crying in his hospital bed when the correspondent came across him and stopped to investigate.
“Are you in great pain?” the newspaper man sympathetically asked.
The lad looked into the other’s eyes and nodded with a choking sob.
“Where does it hurt?” the correspondent pursued.
“It ain’t that,” was the reply; “it’s because they yanked me out of the scrap when I still had ten rounds left.”
THE OOZING OF THE COONS
Negro Sergeant – “When I say ‘’Bout face!’ you place de toe of yo’ right foot six inches to de reah of de heel of yo’ left foot and jus’ ooze aroun’.”
SHE WAS IN UNIFORM
First Officer (in spasm of jealousy) – “Who’s the knock-kneed chap with your sister, old man?”
Second Officer – “My other sister.”
NO CHALLENGING OUT OF HIS CLASS
Sergeant (surprising sentry) – “Why didn’t you challenge that man who just passed?”
Newest Recruit – “Why, that’s Kayo Hogan, sergeant, and he’s got all o’ ten pounds on me!”
CALLING HIM SISSY?
The Fag – “Oh, I’d go to the war quick enough, but mother wouldn’t like me to; and I’ve never disappointed her since the day I was born.”
The Snag – “Well, if she was hoping for a daughter, I’m sure you’ve done your best to console her.”
HOW DISAPPOINTED HE’LL BE
Scotch Warrior from Palestine (whose baby is about to be christened, and who has a bottle of Jordan water for the purpose) – “Eh, by the way, meenister, I ha’e brocht this bottle – ”
Minister – “No’ the noo, laddie! After the ceremony I’ll be verra pleased!”
AMERICAN HUMOR IN FRANCE
The sense of humor of the American is a joy to the French, who miss this quality sadly in the English. A young French woman was conducting two young American officers around Versailles. When they got in the park the French girl said: “Do you know that the French have a pretty saying, ‘The smaller the ivy leaf, the dearer the love?’ So I want each one of you to find the tiniest leaf possible and send it to the one that’s waiting at home.” The men set out, and the first man came back with a perfectly enormous leaf, which he told the girl he had plucked for his mother-in-law! The second officer came back with a leaf even larger and, when asked what loved one was to have that tiny leaf, he said: “Why, this is for the Kaiser!”
SNOBBERY SQUELCHED
On seeing the haughty aristocrat about to disturb a seriously wounded soldier, the Red Cross nurse in charge interposed.
“Excuse me, madam,” she said, “but – ”
She was rudely interrupted by Lady Snobleigh, who cried:
“Woman, you forget yourself. I’m very particular to whom I speak.”
“Oh,” quietly answered the nurse, “that is where we differ. I’m not!”
BLASTED HOPES
“Where is the new recruit?”
“Well, sir, since he went, an hour or two ago, to sew on a button with guncotton, no one seems to have seen anything of him.”
PROFITABLE AUTHORSHIP
The Girl – “And can you manage on your army pay, Phil?”
The “Sub” – “Hardly; but I do a bit of writing besides.”
The Girl – “What kind of writing?”
The “Sub” – “Oh, letters to the guv’nor!”
THE “LONG, LONG TRAIL” OVER THERE
Paris, Nov., 1918. – In the logging camps and sawmills, in barracks and on the drill grounds, in camps and on the march, in “Y” and Red Cross huts, at all hours of the day and night, wherever in France the Yank crusaders were at work, I have heard these lines sung, hummed, and whistled:
“There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And a white moon beams.
There’s a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true,
Till the day when I’ll be going down
That long, long trail with you.”
Wherever a piano found its way into the American lines someone was sure to be playing this chorus; and, dodging in and out of a convoy along the rutted and winding hillside roads in the zone of operations, in drizzle and mud and low flung clouds, one was certain to hear some camion load of lusty doughboys going to the “Long Trail.”
But it remained for H. A. Rodeheaver, Billy Sunday’s trombone expert, to put a new touch to it. He put the “longing” into the long trail with a dash of Sundayesqueness that smeared sawdust all over the long trail.
“Rodey,” as the soldiers call him, has been singing his way through the American camps in France and emulating his picturesque master, when opportunity afforded, by laying down a metaphorical “sawdust trail” and inviting the boys to hit it again in their hearts.
It was quite remarkable how many hands went up in every camp and barracks and hut when he asked them how many had attended a Sunday revival back home. Then he started singing the songs they heard at these meetings, usually beginning with “Brighten the Corner Where You Are.”
He has just the quality of voice that got down deep over here, when the night was dark and damp and the dim light but half illuminated the place, and the boys naturally
