I have had one ambition for this very faulty picture of the American preacher overseas--to leave with my readers the impression of the manhood of the ministry in a time when those who are less than men are either pitied or despised. I reached a Paris hotel one evening utterly tired, dead for rest. I defied the teachings of Horace Fletcher, however, and ate my supper. Before I had finished my meal--I was late--the doors between the dining-room and the parlor were opened, and the programme of the weekly session of the Paris secretaries' club of the Y. M. C. A. began. I gulped my food to get out of the way. Then a man began to read in a voice that rested me and warmed my heart, a voice of richness and vibrant with personality. He read from "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush." I stretched my legs far under the table, leaned hard into the chair, and with my back to the speaker drank in the music of his speaking. The reader was "Dr. Freeman," Freeman of Pasadena, one of the best-loved men in France to-day. He is a "corker," a "prince," the "real stuff," a "humdinger," and a hundred other things, by the ringing testimony of those who know him over there. I followed his trail from the sea to the mountains. I saw the division that he "set up" on the line, travelled the roads over which he distributed his equipment, and heard the men he led there tell how by day and by night he filled his own hands with the meanest tasks and spared not his own body. In Brest I found his manly prayer of purity and strength on the wall of a captain's room. In Toul his successor told me of his unfailing resourcefulness and cheer. Had he his own way, he would be on the line still, out in the greater noise and danger. But he is a good soldier. Now the spiritual directorship of the Y. M. C. A. for France is in his firm hands. We sat through a raid one night after I had "borrowed" a pair of his socks and mussed up his room, and we talked of the great days that are to be when the boys come home. Ah, one of the compensations for the war is the friendships it has made among Christians and the vocabulary it has given them, in which words of faith and fellowship have crowded out the smaller words of doubt and selfishness. One of the best-loved men I found in France was Freeman of Pasadena, a _preacher_. [NOTE.--I wish to say that the preacher referred to in the opening of this chapter is Rev. William L. Stidger, pastor of the first Methodist Episcopal Church of San José, California.--D. A. P.] CHAPTER XV _THREE NEW GRAVES_ Out of a blue and sea-cooled sky the sun looked down upon an ancient city of France. Great ships fantastically camouflaged lay in the harbor; darting to and fro were smaller vessels; the streets of the city were crowded with curious soldiers in khaki stretching their cramped limbs after two weeks in the restricted quarters of a transport.