“Noo Hampshire! Huh! There ain’t nothin’ but mountains there. Why my old man told me that when they let the cows out to grass there they had to put stilts on one side of ’em so they won’t fall off’n the pasture.” Then they turn on me. “Boston! When you get ten miles from Boston you can smell the beans bakin’.” “But I don’t come from Boston,” I protest. “Well there ain’t nothin’ much in Massachusetts outsider Boston. Why the state of Noo Hampshire is goin’ to rent the rest o’ Massachusetts for a duck-yard.” And so it goes. “Gee! but it’s good to get into one shop where you don’t have to talk frog talk!” exclaimed one lad tonight. “I’ve just heard the greatest compliment for you,” another lad declares solemnly, “the greatest compliment that could possibly be paid any woman.” “Why, what was it?” “I just heard a feller say; ‘My! don’t she look different from the French girls!’” A flushed-faced lad leans over my end of the counter; “You know to talk to an American girl like this again, it’s like, it’s like—” Again and again he tries only to become helplessly inarticulate. Then pulling a large bunch of letters “from lady friends” from his pocket, nothing will do but he must tell me about each one. Finally in a fit of prodigal generosity he bestows a handful on me, “Because I’m an American and you’re one too.” As he makes the presentation something falls to the floor with a little click. We search among the litter on the floor, the lad on all fours; finally the lost is found,—a broken bit of comb about two inches and a quarter long. This is a happy chance, he explains, for he is company barber and with the company comb gone E Company would be out of luck. Always our presence here is something that seems so strange to them as to be almost incredible. “Will you please tell me,” asked a serious-looking lad tonight, “what consideration could possibly induce two American girls to come to a place like this?” Continually I am encountering boys who are sure that they’ve “seen me somewhere.” “Say, didn’t you use to live in Milwaukee?” “Haven’t I seen you in Seattle? Well, if it warn’t you, it was somebody that looked just like you!” I suppose it is simply because I look American that I look familiar to them. But the facts in the case seem to be that I have been observed by some member of the A. E. F. in practically every one of the large cities of the U. S. A. One boy nearly started a fight in camp the other night by declaring that in spite of the evidence of my nose he knew I was of Hebraic origin. He had seen me, he solemnly insisted, “goin’ with a Jew feller in Philadelphia.” Undoubtedly it is because they have so little to think about in these drab days that they are so pathetically curious. Every little thing you say or do is repeated, discussed all over camp. Sometimes curiosity gets hold of one of the bolder spirits to such an extent that he ventures the question; “How much do you get paid for smiling at the soldiers?”