"I was ushered into the presence of a French officer, who, I later found out, was a Brigadier-General of the Quartermaster Corps. I could hear a distant booming; they told me it was the guns of France, striving to hold back the German invaders. I trembled all over with excitement, and a feeling that I cannot describe rushed over me. I was listening to my first sound of the guns on the Western Front. "Two days afterward I returned to Bordeaux, and shipped to New York on the French Liner _Rochambeau_. When I arrived in New York I reported to the Frenchman who had sent me over. He was very courteous and, as I reached out to shake hands with him, he placed both hands on my shoulders and kissed me on the right and left cheek. I was dumfounded and blushed all over. I think I could have borne another trip across with horses, but that being kissed upon my return completely got my goat. "I went back to the routine of my office, but everything had lost color and seemed monotonous. I believe I had left my heart in France, and I felt mean and small over there, eating three squares a day and sleeping on a soft bed, when the armies on the other side were making the world's history. "Several times later I passed that sign on Greenwich Street, 'Horses for France, Men Wanted,' and the pictures of the second foreman dropping the pasty-faced doctor would loom before my eyes. I do not know to this day what became of that nervy wreck of humanity, who had the temerity to tell our foreman where he got off at. "So, Sailor Bill, old scout, how about that for a 'passage,'" concluded Yank. Sailor Bill did not answer. Curly butted in: "Me for the trenches every time." The rest agreed with Curly. So did Yank. THE END