------------------------

One hundred and fifty-two thousand cups of tea and coffee are given away monthly at one railway-station.  I once happened to be at a railway-station on the main lines of communication.  There are women working there, women of position and means, working at their own expense.  I have seen rough fellows go up to a British woman behind a counter—­the first time they have seen a British woman for months—­and I have heard them say, “Madam, will you shake hands with me?” I saw an Australian do that.  He got her hand—­and his was like a leg of mutton—­and he thought of his mother and his home-folk.  He forgot his tea.  It was a benediction to have that woman there.

Well, on this occasion two of these ladies said to me, “Gipsy, we’re having a relief train pass through to-morrow, and one comes through up and one comes through down.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

The train that was coming from the front we could hear before we could see it.  And it wasn’t the engine that we heard, because that came so slowly, but I could hear the boys singing as they came round the curve,

“Blighty, Blighty is the place for me.”

We served them with tea and coffee, French bread a yard long, and candles and matches and “Woodbines,” and then we got that crowd off—­still singing “Blighty.”

They had been gone about five minutes when the other train from Blighty came in.  We couldn’t hear them singing.  They were quiet and subdued.  We served them with coffee and tea, candles, bootlaces, and smokes, and then, as they had some time, they started having a wash—­the first since they left Blighty.  The footboard of the train was the washstand, the shaving-table, and the dressing-table.  But they didn’t sing.

I saw in a corner of that little canteen a pile of postcards, and I said, “Who says a postcard for wife or mother?”

Somebody asked, “Who’s going to see them posted?”

I said, “I am.  You leave them to me.”

They said, “All right,” and I began to give out the postcards.

I started at one end of the train and went on to the other end.  In the middle I found two carriages full of officers.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “will you please censor these postcards as I collect them, and that will relieve the pressure on the local staff, for I don’t want to put any extra work on them?”

“Oh, certainly,” they answered, and I sent a dozen or twenty up at a time to them, and in fifteen minutes that train was steaming out of the station and the boys were singing, “Should auld acquaintance.”

When they had gone I collected the postcards that had been written and censored—­and there were 575.  To keep the boys in touch with home is religion; to keep in their lives the finest, the most beautiful home-sentiment that God ever gives to the world is a bit of religion—­pure and undefiled.

------------------------

How gloriously brave are the French women and Belgian women!  I was talking to one in London—­a young girl not more than eighteen or nineteen.  She was serving me in a restaurant, and I saw she was wiping her eyes, so I called her to me and said, “What’s the matter, my child?”