The first night after the Chief had taken me over to call at my canteen and I had had one cursory glance at them, I came back feeling that my hut contained the roughest, toughest set of young ruffians that I had ever laid eyes on. The second night I came home and fairly cried myself to sleep over them—they seemed so young, so pitiful and so puzzled underneath their air of bravery, so far away from anything they really understood and everybody that was dear to them. It was Cummings in particular I think who did it for me. He owns to seventeen but I would put fifteen as an outside estimate. A mere boy who hasn’t got his growth yet, with soft unformed features and a voice as shrill as a child’s, I am sure he ran away from home to go to war just as another lad might have run away to see the circus. Although the regiment is a regular army organization, a large part of the men were raw recruits only last summer, a fact which causes the old-timers, whose service dates from Border days or before, no little regret. “This Man’s Army ain’t what it used to be,” they complain; “it’s getting too mixed.” The “veterans” have a stock saying which they employ to put the youngsters in their places: “Call yourself a soldier do you? Why I’ve stood parade rest longer than you’ve been in the army!” This is sometimes varied, when the speaker happens to be the tough sort, by; “Huh! I’ve put more time in the guard-house than you have in the army!” Tonight a boy came up to the counter and asked: “Goin’ to serve hot chocolate tonight?” “Sure thing!” “Then I guess I won’t go out and get drunk.” It’s going to be hot chocolate or die in that hut every night after this! Bourmont, November 31. I don’t like my uniform. I don’t like women in uniform anyway. I suppose it is because one is so used to the expression of a woman’s personality in dress that when she dons regulation garb she seems to lose so much. And then to really carry off a uniform requires a flair, a dash, a swagger, and such are rarely feminine possessions. The consensus of opinion seems to bear me out. “Of course I think women in uniforms look very snappy,” confided a lad to me today; “but somehow they don’t look like women to me!” “_Pas joli_,” says Monsieur le Commandant severely, referring to my hat. “_Pas joli!_” But when I put on my old blue civilian coat he fairly goes into raptures. “Be-u-ti-ful!” he ejaculates. “Be-u-ti-ful! _Toilette de ville. Pas toilette de Y. M. C. A.!_” Besides the suit and cape I had made in Paris, they gave me two canteen aprons, aprons such as French working women wear, voluminous, beplaited, made in Mother Hubbard style. Now there is one point on which I am resolved. They can court martial me, they can send me home, or they can lead me out and shoot me at sunrise, but they cannot make me wear those aprons! What’s more, the very first minute that I have to myself I’m going to cut them up and make them into canteen dish-cloths. Bourmont, December 3.