Having had my wound dressed and having togged myself up in my new uniform, I jumped into the inevitable taxi and went to lunch at the Ritz with some of the visiting American editors. It was delightfully refreshing to listen to Charlie Towne’s, the editor of McClure’s, wild enthusiasm for the courageous high spirits of England. “The streets are dark at night,” he said, “but in the people’s hearts there is more light than ever.” Two stories were told, illuminatingly true, of the way in which the average Englishman carries on. There was an officer who had had an eye shot out; the cavity was filled with an artificial one. Towne felt a profound pity for him, but at the same time he was rather surprised to see that the chap wore a monocle in the eye that was sightless. At last he plucked up courage to ask him what was the object of the monocle. The chap smiled drolly. “I do it for a rag,” he said; “it makes me look more funny.” A Canadian Tommy, without any legs, was being wheeled down a station platform. Another wounded Tommy called out to him, “You’re not on the staff, Bill. Why don’t yer get out and walk?” “'Cause I’m as good as a dook now,” the chap replied; “for the rest of me life I’m a kerridge gent.” The thing that seems to have impressed these American visitors most of all is the way in which our soldiers make adversity appear comic by their triumphant capacity for mockery. Towne, being a lover of poetry, was terrifically keen to visit Goldsmith’s grave. I hadn’t the foggiest idea where it was, but after lunch we set out in search of it. At last we found it in a shady backwater of the Inner Temple—a simple slab on which the only inscription was the name, “Oliver Goldsmith.” I know of only one parallel to this for illustrious brevity; a gravestone in Paris, from which even the Christian name is omitted and on which the solitary word “Heine” is written. I liked to see the poet from Broadway bare his head as he stood by the long-dead English poet’s grave. Behind us in the Temple chapel the confident soprano of boys’ voices soared. It was a grey-blue day, made tawny for brave moments by fugitive stabs of sunshine. Lime trees dappled the cold courtyard with shadows; leaves drifted down like gilded largesse. Old men, with dimming eyes and stooped backs, shuffled from stairway to stairway, carrying heavy ledgers. The rumble of Fleet Street reached us comfortingly, like the sound of distant surf on an unseen shore. My thoughts wrenched themselves free from the scenes of blood and struggle in which I participated less than two weeks ago. Here, in that simple inscription, was the symbol of the one quality which survives Time’s erasures—character which loved and won love intensely.