I am reading Turgenev. Lieut. Hunt passes me running; he is doing his daily three times circuit of the camp. “Torrents of Spring!” he cries laughingly, kicking up his heels colt-like, in reference both to my book and to his own exuberance! LINGUISTIC EFFORTS If we did not subsist by taking in each other’s laundry we possibly survived death from ennui by teaching each other languages. As I read I can hear Dr. Griffin’s deliberate and enunciating voice. He is our most proficient of professors, and is giving a French officer a lesson in English, with special reference to the pronunciation. “The knife of the boy and the stick of the man. Have you the pen of the sister?” Two wounded officers are pushed in through the gates--one in a bath chair, the other on a stretcher on wheels. A gramophone is giving forth a military march with well-nigh the full power of a military band. The march finishes with “God Save the King,” and a number of the officers stand to attention. A drayman, who has been delivering stores to the _Kantine_, cracks his whip with a report like a revolver shot, until the sentry opens the gate, and he passes out. From one of the adjoining houses come flights of arpeggios from a piano well played. One of my Italian friends, who, on the maternal side, is of Scottish descent, is learning English, with the very tender idea of “giving a surprise to Mother.” Bertolotti, another good comrade, and very apt pupil of my own, approaches me after about a week’s tuition. “Good morning,” he says. “Good morning.” Then, with more deliberation, “It is a--bloody fool (beautiful) day!” Even this, however, is not so bad as the story told of Commandant Niemeyer of Clausthal, who, when some prisoners on parade showed evidence of mirthfulness at his somewhat pretentious display of rather dubious English, burst forth irately, “You officers think I know nothing--but I know damn all!” [Illustration: LT. VISCO.] I must not pass from my Italian friends without reference to the hospitable and, indeed, quite regal dinner to which the group entertained me upon a certain Sunday afternoon. Major Tuzzi sat at the head of the board, for the covering of which my hosts had succeeded in conjuring up from somewhere or other a white table-cloth--the only one I saw during my captivity. They had also achieved quite a variety of dishes, all of undeniable cookery. Chief of these was a great trencher of macaroni, in the consumption of which--because of the greater deftness in manipulation of my friends, and the unbounded generosity of their helpings--I was easily the last man. A right merry and unforgetable repast, with more of kindly family suggestion in it than any I had in Germany. LAST DAY IN CARLSRUHE