girls came running with bunches of wild flowers for us to wear in our helmets. It was a new experience and we were delighted. At 10 P. M. we passed through Mussy, and reached Gommeville, three kilometers beyond, where we pitched pup-tents in a field by the light of a full moon.

                The next morning was the first of the fourteen pleasant days we were to spend at Gommeville. As for its description, it may have been a very ordinary village—even ugly—but the people were kind, the sun was bright, and the Seine was cool; for us it was Paradise. Some budding Battery genius in a letter home accomplished a description that is almost a classic of flamboyancy, but which leaves a rather accurate impression:

                "Picture a low amphitheatre of hills sloping sweetly to a sun-parched field of stubble. Although you do not look attentively at these upland vineyards and meadows, yet you reap from them a sense of rich plenty * * * The meadow it is that takes your eye; for straight across its yellow expanse is stretched a double line of guns, caissons, wagons, and horses; and beyond them is the Seine. Not the majestic Seine of the city bridges this, but a slow, weedy stream, shaded by beech and willow. Along its banks the grass is fresh and green,—a fit carpet for the row of small brown tents which toe an imaginary mark in mock dignity. And over all comes a wayward breeze inquisitively idling down from the hills only to scurry in panic across the hot meadow and cool its scorched wings in the deep shadows of the Seine."

                At Gommeville the Battery led a healthy, normal

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