It was a pretty city, but all of a sudden I felt awfully blue. Everywhere you turned somebody hollered something at you in a language you couldn't make head or tail of--even the hack drivers and little kids in the street talked French. I took a room at the Continental, and say, they almost robbed the shirt off me. Next morning I was wishing so hard for home you could almost hear me coming down the street. I found the American Express office and lingered there listening to people speaking English. I wondered where the gay part of "Paree" came in. It looked busy and prosperous and warlike to me--but gay? Nothing doing. Just then someone spoke in my mother tongue and I whirled to see a French army officer at my elbow. "If you have not already seen the sights of Paris, it will give me great pleasure to show them to you," he said. I hadn't, so he proceeded to do the honors, and, like everything the French do--be it big or small--he made a thorough job of it. He was my host for two days and a half, and I'll guarantee I saw every little thing in Paris from the Apaches up. I wouldn't have missed that sight-seeing trip for all the gold in Europe. That's the French for you. Their hearts and their homes were opened wide to us. I bet there isn't a Yank living who wouldn't fight to the last breath for them. Next I fell in with two French privates on furlough. They took me home with them and to show my gratitude I sang our songs for them and taught them some real live United States slang. They were good pupils, too, and were proud as peacocks of startling a crowd by calling out, "Wash you step!" It was from them that I bought my best little souvenir--a German officer's helmet one of the Frenchies had picked up after shooting his man. It was a peach of a helmet, slashed across the patent leather crown, and still stained with blood. Inside was stamped the officer's name and regiment. He was of the Death Head Huzzars--the Kaiser's own. I asked Frenchie if he didn't want to keep it, but he shrugged. He could get plenty more, I made out he meant. He was going back to the front soon; they'd be picking helmets off the trees once the French got really started. So I bought it from him for forty francs. [Illustration: "Before taking"--a dose of military discipline makes them "Topnotch Americans."] Our boat lay in the harbor. They were coaling it, and, once ready, we started our work of patrolling the coast. It was on one early afternoon that we got sudden orders to put to sea, and we started out at a fast clip. Somebody passed the word that we were on a rescue party and to keep a sharp watch out for rafts or lifeboats.