“I’m feared somebody’ll pinch me an’ I’ll wake up,” declared one lad today. More than one has told me, that the first night he got here, he could not go to sleep in bed at all and only finally achieved slumber by rolling himself in blankets on the floor. There are no troops from the line here at present; only boys from forestry regiments, motor mechanics and a few lads from medical detachments. They are holding up the leaves of all combatant troops on account of the drive. It may be that presently they will hold up all leaves altogether. Then we will have to shut up shop here temporarily. It is the pleasant custom here for the Y ladies to go down to the train every night to see the boys off. “It’s a shame you can’t stay longer,” we say to them. “I’ll say it is!” “I’m awfully sorry you have to go.” “You ain’t half so sorry as I am, Lady.” “Maybe some day you’ll be coming back again.” “I’ll tell the world one thing; I’m going to be good as gold when I get back to camp, so they’ll let me.” One of the Y women tonight repeated what one boy on leaving had confided to her: “If I said to you that this had been my happiest week since I joined the army it wouldn’t mean much,” he told her, “but that’s not what I’m going to say. What I’m going to say is that this has been the happiest week of all my life.” So far I have found just one man who wasn’t enjoying himself here. He had been stationed for six months at Paris. Aix, he declared, “Weren’t no town at all, nothin’ but a one-horse place.” He evidently had no soul for the beauties of nature. Paris, April 22. They held the leaves up. The boys kept leaving; fewer and fewer came, then finally none. Last week they disbanded the force of workers at Aix; a few stayed to look after things until such time as the crowds should start to pour in again; the rest were sent back to Paris to be reassigned. If I thought the trip down was a chore, it wasn’t a patch on the trip back. We waited half the night for the train at the Aix railway station. When it finally pulled in, I found my seat was in a compartment which was full, and had evidently been so for hours, of French people. Now life in France tends to cure you of belief in several popular superstitions; one is the idea that it is dangerous to have wet feet, and another that there is anything in the germ theory; but there is one notion to which I still cling, an obstinate belief in the desirability of fresh air. I put my head in the compartment, then withdrew, shutting the door. For the twelve hours it took to reach Paris I stood up outside in the corridor.