The words with which we others cursed Seemed mild and harmless quips Compared to those remarks that burst From Private Thompson's lips; Haven't you ever heard about The Prussian Guard at X Redoubt, How Thompson's language laid them out Before we came to grips? Anyhow, after bespattering the air of France and Flanders with a barrage of anathemas for the best part of a year, Private Thompson did something creditable in one of the pushes, and retired to a hospital in England, whence he emerged a few months later with a slight limp, a discharge certificate and a piece of coloured ribbon on his waistcoat. Having expressed his opinion on hospital life, he returned to his native town. His first shock was when he was met at the station by the local band and conducted up the Station Road and down the beflagged High Street to the accompaniment of martial and patriotic strains. His second was when he was confronted at the steps of the Town Hall by the Mayor and an official gathering of the leading citizens, with an unofficial background of the led ones, and found himself the subject of speeches of adulation and welcome. He was too dumbfounded to grasp all that was said, but he recovered his senses in time to hear the Mayor assuring his audience that it gave him great pleasure, indeed he might go so far as to say the very greatest pleasure, to welcome on behalf of their town one who had upheld with such distinction and bravery the reputation and honour of the community. And that, although he did not wish to keep them any longer, yet he must just add that he was going to ask Mr. Thompson then and there, while the remembrance of his terrible hardships was still fresh in his mind, to impart them to a phonograph, so that the archives of the town might not lack direct evidence of the experiences, if he might so express it, of her bravest citizen, and future generations might know something of the noble thoughts that surged in so gallant a breast in times of danger, and the fine and honourable words with which those thoughts had been uttered. The Mayor's peroration annoyed Thompson; the cheers that followed it annoyed him still more, and the subsequent shower of congratulations and vigorous slaps on the back threatened to move him to reply in a speech which might have been unintelligible to the ladies present. Fortunately the danger was averted. Before he could come into action a select committee of two, specially appointed for the purpose, had seized him by the arms and was conducting him up the steps of the Town Hall. The rapidity and the unexpected nature of the movement threw him out of gear, and he was forced to adopt an attitude of sullen silence during the progress of the little party across the Council Chamber and through a doorway leading into a small room.