Bands an’ parades, grand-opera stars singin’ on the corners, famous actors sellin’ bonds, flags an’ ribbons an’ banners everywhere, an’ every third man you bumped into wearin’ some kind of uniform!  An’ the women were runnin’ wild, like a stampede of two-year-olds....  I rode down Fifth Avenue on one of them high-topped buses with seats on.  Talk about your old stage-coach—­why, these ’buses had ’em beat a mile!  I’ve rode some in my day, but this was the ride of my life.  I couldn’t hear myself think.  Music at full blast, roar of traffic, voices like whisperin’ without end, flash of red an’ white an’ blue, shine of a thousand automobiles down that wonderful street that’s like a canon!  An’ up overhead a huge cigar-shaped balloon, an’ then an airplane sailin’ swift an’ buzzin’ like a bee.  Them was the first air-ships I ever seen.  No wonder—­Jim wanted to—­”

Anderson’s voice broke a little at this juncture and he paused.  All was still except the murmur of the running water and the song of the insects.  Presently Anderson cleared his throat and resumed: 

“I saw five hundred Australian soldiers just arrived in New York by way of Panama.  Lean, wiry boys like Arizona cowboys.  Looked good to me!  You ought to have heard the cheerin’.  Roar an’ roar, everywhere they marched along.  I saw United States sailors, marines, soldiers, airmen, English officers, an’ Scotch soldiers.  Them last sure got my eye.  Funny plaid skirts they wore—­an’ they had bare legs.  Three I saw walked lame.  An’ all had medals.  Some one said the Germans called these Scotch ‘Ladies from hell.’ ...  When I heard that I had to ask questions, an’ I learned these queer-lookin’ half-women-dressed fellows were simply hell with cold steel.  An’ after I heard that I looked again an’ wondered why I hadn’t seen it.  I ought to know men!...  Then I saw the outfit of Blue Devil Frenchmen that was sent over to help stimulate the Liberty Loan.  An’ when I seen them I took off my hat.  I’ve knowed a heap of tough men an’ bad men an’ handy men an’ fightin’ men in my day, but I reckoned I never seen the like of the Blue Devils.  I can’t tell you why, boys.  Blue Devils is another German name for a regiment of French soldiers.  They had it on the Scotch-men.  Any Western man, just to look at them, would think of Wild Bill an’ Billy the Kid an’ Geronimo an’ Custer, an’ see that mebbe the whole four mixed in one might have made a Blue Devil.

“My young friend Dorn, that’s dyin’ up-stairs, now—­he had a name given him.  ’Pears that this war-time is like the old days when we used to hit on right pert names for everybody....  Demon Dorn they called him, an’ he got that handle before he ever reached France.  The boys of his outfit gave it to him because of the way he run wild with a bayonet.  I don’t want my girl Lenore ever to know that.

“A soldier named Owens told me a lot.  He was the corporal of Dorn’s outfit,