The newcomer was a big, obese Corsican mountaineer, with a pleasant, round face and brown eyes. He advanced quietly to the side of the stage holding a ten-sou tin flute in his hand, and when he began to play, for an instant I forgot all about the Bois-le-Prêtre, the trenches, and everything else. The man was a born musician. I never heard anything more tender and sweet than the little melody he played. The poilus listened in profound silence, and when he had finished, a kind of sigh exhaled from the hearts of the audience. There followed another singer, a violinist, and a clown whose song of a soldier on furlough finished with these appreciated couplets:-- "The Government says it is the thing To have a baby every spring; So when your son Is twenty-one, He'll come to the trenches and take papa's place. So do your duty by the race." In the uproar of cheers of "That's right," and so on, the concert ended. The day after the concert was Sunday, and at about ten o'clock that morning a young soldier with a fluffy, yellow chin beard came down the muddy street shouting, "le Mouchoir, le Mouchoir." About two or three hundred paper sheets were clutched tightly in his left hand, and he was selling them for a sou apiece. Little groups of poilus gathered round the soldier newsboy; I saw some of them laughing as they went away. The paper was the trench paper of the Bois-le-Prêtre, named the "Mouchoir" (the handkerchief) from a famous position thus called in the Bois. The jokes in it were like the jokes in a local minstrel show, puns on local names, jests about the Boches, and good-humored satire. The spirit of the "Mouchoir" was whole-heartedly amateur. Thus the issue which followed a heavy snowfall contained this genuine wish:-- "Oh, snow, Please go, Leave the trench Of the French; Cross the band Of No Man's Land To where the Boche lies. Freeze him, Squeeze him, Soak him, Choke him, Cover him, Smother him, Till the beggar dies." This is far from an exact translation, but the idea and the spirit have been faithfully preserved. The "Mouchoir" was always a bit more squeamish than the average, rollicking trench journal, for it was issued by a group of medical service men who were almost all priests. Indeed, there were some issues that combined satire, puns, and piety in a terrifying manner. Its editors printed it in the cellar of the church, using a simple sheet of gelatine for their press. I wandered in to see the church. The usual number of civilians were to be seen, and a generous sprinkling of soldiers. Through the open door of the edifice the sounds of a mine-throwing competition at the Bois occasionally drifted. The abbé, a big, dark man of thirty-four or five, with a deep, resonant voice and positive gestures, had come to the sermon.