We were quartered in private houses, and as there was one man to a family generally, he was put in the villager's room of honor, with a tall porcelain stove in the corner, a feather bed under him, and another on top. Each man had a soldier servant who looked after boots and luggage, kept him supplied with cigars and cigarettes from the Quartier commissariat--for a paternal government included even tobacco!--and charmed the simple republican heart by whacking his heels together whenever spoken to and flinging back "Jawohl!" We breakfasted separately, whenever we felt like it, on the rolls with the glass of whipped cream and coffee usual in this part of the world; lunched and dined--officers and correspondents--together. There were soldier waiters who with military precision told how many pieces one might take, and on every table big carafes of Hungarian white wine, drunk generally instead of water. For beer one paid extra. The commandant and his staff, including a doctor, and the officer guides not on excursions at the moment, sat at the head of the long U-shaped table. Any one who came in or went out after the commandant was seated was supposed to advance a bit into this "U," catch his eye, bow, and receive his returning nod. The silver click of spurs, of course, accompanied this salute when an officer left the room, and the Austro-Hungarian and German correspondents generally snapped their heels together in semi-military fashion. All our goings and comings, indeed, were accompanied by a good deal of manner. People who had seen each other at breakfast shook hands formally half an hour later in the village square, and one bowed and was bowed to and heard the singsong... "'habe die Ehre!" a dozen times a day. Nagybiesce is in northern Hungary, and the peasants round about were Slovaks--sturdy, solid, blond people with legs the same size all the way down. Many of them still reaped with scythes and thrashed on the barn floor with old-fashioned flails, and one afternoon there was a curious plaintive singing under my window--a party of harvesters, oldish men and brown, barefooted peasant girls, who had finished their work on a neighboring farm, and were crossing our village on their way to their own.