was only because I acted as her amanuensis that I was permitted to see it. She admitted that she 'was main glad that it was only a accident that had got Jim, for if it had been them Germans she could never ha' forgiven them'; but it was evident, notwithstanding, that her faith in Jim had suffered a serious check.

The letter aforementioned was received on a Friday, but on the following Monday stirring news reached us at Little Turfbury. The morning papers came out with a list of the new V.C.s, and among the names was that of Corporal Green. I read the item over the breakfast table. 'For conspicuous bravery,' so began the brief report, and then went on:

All others being killed or wounded, Green and his officer held the trench for three hours against a large enemy force. In the late afternoon the officer fell wounded. Taking advantage of the darkness, though under heavy shrapnel fire, Green crawled out of the trench and bore the wounded officer into safety. He then returned, and brought out another wounded man. Going back a third time, and finding all the other occupants of the trench dead, he brought back the machine gun. Unfortunately, Green was himself wounded next day by a flying beam from a house struck by an enemy shell, and is at present in hospital.

It took some little time for this news to get home to our hearts, but when it finally did, something akin to a revolution happened in our tiny borough. People who had never heard the name of Corporal Green until then, mysteriously discovered that he was one of their intimates. The quarry owner descended on his men in a frock coat and silk hat, and with a flag in his buttonhole; called for three times three for the hero, and gave a day's holiday with full pay. Mine host of the 'Fiddle and Trumpet' drew much custom by retailing stories of Jim's prowess as a pigeon shooter (true) and of the in

numerable pints he could take without effect (apocryphal). Mrs. Green, her confidence and her garrulousness alike restored, became a person of consequence, and her cottage was invaded by all sorts of well-wishers. When her portrait appeared in the local press, Lane's End felt itself exalted. Incidentally mentioning to the vicar that Jim was coming home next Wednesday week at three, that enthusiastic parson passed on the information, and Little Turfbury at once began preparation for receiving its gallant townsman in fine style. The corporation met in secret conclave and discussed whether or not the Freedom of the Borough should be conferred on the corporal, and the discussion only petered out when a distinguished alderman explained that the Freedom of the Borough meant freedom from all rates and taxes, which he felt might, if conferred once, by setting up a precedent, militate in future against all disinterested heroism in the British Army.'

Up in hospital Corporal Green became the astonished recipient of many letters. His brow corrugated as he watched the pile on the little table grow. As a concession to public curiosity, he allowed the nurse to open and read one of them; but, finding it to be from a stranger, he brusquely refused to allow the others to be opened. He would take them home,' he said, 'where it would please the owd woman to read them,' and the inquisitive nurse whisked herself away in a tantrum, remarking audibly 'that though Corporal Green might be a brave man, he was a bear all the same."

It was owing to these letters going unopened that Jim, on his way north, reached reached the junction, where he changed trains for Little Turfbury, without the slightest inkling of the

bands and banners and huzzas which were awaiting him on the platform there. An energetic reporter, athirst for news, and who boarded the waiting train at the junction, was the first to enlighten him. He was a brisk young fellow, who prided himself on knowing how to deal with all sorts of men; but, finding that he could get nothing out of his quarry than that he had done nowt to talk about,' began to tell of the doings at Little Turfbury in the hope of drawing his man by that means.

For a time Jim listened with mouth agape and eyes ablaze. The reporter noticed the impression his words made, and began to congratulate himself on a glorious coup; he was getting at his man at last. Suddenly his hearer rose up and, without a word, lurched out of the compartment. The brisk The brisk young newsman awaited his return in vain; so also did the Mayor and Corporation of Little Turfbury.

The town clock was striking midnight when a haggard and weary man in khaki who had extended the ten miles which lay between the junction and his home into fifteen, by choosing unfrequented paths took the last turning into Lane's End. A well-known step outside the cottage and an excited whine within told his anxious mother who had arrived. She hastened to fling open the door.

Eh, but I'm right pleased to see ye, lad; whatever are ye doing so late?'

sat down heavily on the nearest chair. Quick to notice that something was wrong, Mrs. Green busied herself with the supper table; she had learned by experience to bide her time. It was not till the meal was half over that he spoke. 'I'm fair capped wi' yer, mother, letting them mayors and corporations make such fools o' themselves!" was his first remark.

'I could n't help it, Jim; I really could n't. I telled 'em that ye did n't like fussing ower; but they said as ye were a 'ero, and oughter be received as one.'

'I wish I had 'em all i' the trenches,' he growled. 'I ud give 'em summat to do better than flag-wagging and trumpet-blaring, that I ud.'

He bent over the the supper table again, but the birth-mark in his forehead stood out threateningly. Presently he pushed away his plate with his unwounded hand and looked around, his glance finally resting on the old worn face opposite. The look of yearning home hunger which I have often detected in the eyes of war-wearied men from the front, came into those of Corporal Grim. He gulped in his throat, and his hard face softened.

'Mother, did ye ever kiss me when I was a babby?'

'Ay, lad, many and many and many a time.'

"Then kiss me now, mother; and as for them mayors and corporations..." Ah, yes, there were certainly unplumbed depths in the heart of

Land and Water

'SIR, I thank you for permission to go ashore.' 'Are n't you the cook?''Yes, Sir.' 'How long do you want?' -Just till six bells, Sir.'-'Who 're you leaving in charge of the galley?' Where's

Mott, Sir.'-' Mott? Schultz?' 'On the binnacle list, Sir. Hit the deck yesterday an' sprained his ankle. But there's only slumgullion to get, Sir; an' Mott's all right at that.'-'Better go before the mast. If the skipper has n't any objection, I'll give you shore leave.'

It sounded like the opening of a sea romance by the late W. Clark Russell. Yet I was on dry land, within a stone's throw of the spot wherefrom I am now writing. The only canvas was that of a tent or two among rows of Adrian huts; the sole funnel was the gaunt chimney of an open-air oven; the nearest thing to a mast was a flag pole. An enlisted man was asking an officer if he might walk from this cantonment to town, returning at 11 o'clock, and was explaining that, his chief assistant having hurt himself in a fall, the beef stew for mess would be prepared in the kitchen by a competent substitute. Whereto the officer was replying that it would be necessary for the applicant to go to the Captain's office and obtain there an assurance that the petition had the Captain's ‘O.K.' In brief, I was in a camp, ashore, of the U.S. Marines.

Kipling was right. That poem of his about the British 'Jollies' jumps into your mind the moment you become a guest of their American coun

terpart and continues to justify itself so long as you remain. I have been living with him for a bit, and — both because he carries his sea lingo ashore and his shore rifle afloat, and because he is as much an amphibian in duties as in mind I can think of the Marine, not as a 'special chrysanthemum,' but only as 'soldier an' sailor too.' He has done policeduty across half the world from Porto Rico to the Philippines - and now he is policing in France. He has fought in Cuba and the islands of the Pacific, in Mexico and Hayti - everywhere, he has justifiably boasted, he was 'the first to fight' and now, although a little hurt at not being allowed to be the earliest to pull a trigger among our men in Europe, his has at least the distinction of having been the earliest and readiest unit of them that arrived for such a purpose on the eastern shore of the Atlantic.

The first Marine that I saw when I came to the city near here was one of a squad unloading stone from a railway car for the construction of a pier; around about were similarly employed squads of engineers and negro contract laborers from Louisiana. The last Marine that I saw to-day, before retiring to his commander's office to write this article, was, with businesslike calm, subduing five tall men by means of one short club. Of him, when he had refused my proffered help with quiet scorn and secured his prisoners by his own unaided efforts, I asked a question. 'Why don't the infantry care for us?' he snapped

back. He nodded at his five charges. "That's why. O' course they say we go out of our way to beat 'em up, but o' course it ain't true. Our job's to keep things quiet, an' we can do it best by not seein' fellows unless they want to be seen.' 'Still,' I urged, 'you don't dislike it - this sort of thing?' He grinned broadly. ""First to fight"!' he chuckled. To the other Marine just mentioned to the member of the stone-hauling squad - I put, I remember, another query. 'What do you think of Pershing?' 'Well,' he answered, 'Pershing don't seem to think much of us.' That man was sore because his corps had to cart stone when it wanted to fight. He might have argued that General Pershing thinks a good deal of the Marines because he trusts so much to their performance.

For the Marines are everywhere. They are the first Americans you see when you land; they are maintaining order at our ports of entry. All the way across the country and through the American camp, it is a Marine that you note at every station a Marine that comes up to you with blank book and poised pencil, and the demand, firm but polite: 'Let me make a note of your movement orders, Sir.' In Paris, as in every French town and village where there are U.S. troops, there also are the Marines, on patrol duty by night and traffic control duty by day, their blue sea-service uniforms changed for land uniforms of khaki and around their left arms the red brassard bearing the black initials 'M.P.' 'What are those fellows, Sir?' a Gordon Highlander once asked me on the Rue de Rivoli. 'Marines,' I told him. "The letters stand for "Military Police."' 'Oh,' he said, 'I heard you had some of your Congressmen over here, an' I was wonderin' if these was them, an'

if the letters meant "Member o' Parliament." Finally, at this and other seaside cities, the Marines are both 'shore cops' and stevedores. 'But only for a little while,' they one and all assure you, even the officers: "The brass hats are sure to let us fight soon.'

'Now 'is work begins by Gawd knows when, and 'is work is never through; 'E is n't one o' the reg'lar Line, nor 'e is n't one of the crew.

'E's a kind of a giddy harumfrodite soldier an' sailor too!'

The Marines have two salient characteristics: their ability to make something out of nothing and to do it quickly, results in their establishing themselves at once and with a minimum of damage to surroundings; and, since they bring ashore with them the sea tradition of cleanliness and order, they are, when not the first to fight, the first to clean. I recall a French seaport at which none of our men had ever landed before a certain ship began to disgorge an equal number of soldiers and Marines; the later were under canvas before the former had left the dock; the Marines had even collected kindling from ash heaps and had their cook stoves going. A few nights since, I saw a newly arrived company of them march into this camp; when I visited their quarters at 6 A.M. you would have supposed that they had been born and bred there. 'All our own work but the stone foundations for the ovens,' a sergeant assured me, 'an' we'd have done that, only these French Johnnies insisted that it was a job for the Boche prisoners.'

What sort of men are they? They will answer that interrogation with a ready brevity. The best,' they will say and, after living among them, I am not so sure that they are wrong. By one of the odd freaks of their

anomalous law of organization, their surgeons and chaplains are sailors, whereas all the rest of the corps is, in each individual case, one-half land and one-half sea. Perhaps because distance makes for romance, the majority of our Marines in this camp come from the plains; here is the band of a State Agricultural College in the Mississippi Valley that enlisted as a unit, and across the way is housed a company seventy members of which joined in a body from the University of one of our Central Northwestern commonwealths. Most of them never saw the ocean before they volunteered for service. 'You know,' one of these told me, 'when we raw fellows got on the transport, we found they'd remembered only the sailor side of us and given us hammocks to sleep in

regular hammocks, only half too short for a grown man and twothirds too narrow. We'd never been to sea before; it was all we could do to climb into the things, and more than we could do to stay there. So we just rolled 'em up for pillows an' slept on the deck.'

Don't, however, suppose that the majority of Marines are green men. Though by far the larger part volunteered, by far the larger part volunteered long ago. Some day somebody will write a romance of the Marines, and when he does he need not draw on his imagination; he need only collect the data when their stolid modesty will vouchsafe it from such veterans as we have here, who began as those boys from Kansas or Minnesota are beginning now. He need but tell the story of that sergeant of thirty, who looks twenty-five, and who enlisted at sixteen; of how he ran away to sea, like one of W. H. G. Kingston's boys; of that cloudless day when he rowed under fire across the unprotected strip of water to patrol

the streets of Vera Cruz, and of the succeeding night, when he, and three other men, held a freight car, loaded with explosives, against an armed Mexican mob. He need only gain the confidence of this lad from Pittsburgh to learn of hand-to-hand fights that began against outnumbering Mexican Regulars, drawn from their cover on roofs and behind chimneys, and ended in repelling rear attacks of the Mexican police. You see that grizzled old fellow over there?' a Captain asked me. He himself was young enough to have been the 'old fellow's' son, but the old fellow was still tough enough to have been the Captain's twin brother. 'Well, he 's had a lot of it - Philippines, Boxer Rebellion, Vera Cruz, and Hayti. You know, in the Marines, when we can't think of the generic name for anything, we call it a "gadget" or a "gilguy." Now, this man has won two Congressional Medals and has another coming. When we sighted the French coast, I was standing, where he could n't see me, just behind him; and I heard him say: "I got two o' them gadgets now, an' one on its way. I wonder if I'll get another over here."

The Marine, as I've said, carries all his sea terms ashore, and his vocabulary is almost entirely nautical. When he stops what he has been doing, he 'belays' it; when you tell him to prepare to do something else, you order him to 'stand by' for it; and when he is called before his commanding officer, he is brought up before the mast.' Though he falls on a country road, he 'hits the deck'; when he is slightly ill, he goes 'on the binnacle list'; and when he must at last enter hospital, even if a motor ambulance carries him to a building at a street corner, it carries him to the 'sick bay.' He gets a stripe for every enlistment, and the stripes are 'hash