ine. I was in
the retreat from Mons, with French on the Marne, at Ypres, all
through the winter fighting along the Canal, on the Gallipoli
Peninsula, and, just lately, in Servia. I've seen more of this war
than any soldier. Because, sometimes, they give the soldier a
rest; they never give the medical corps a rest. The only rest I
got was when I was wounded."

He seemed no worse for his wounds, so again I tendered
congratulations. This time he accepted them. The recollection of
the things he had seen, things incredible, terrible, unique in
human experience, had stirred him. He talked on, not boastfully,
but in a tone, rather, of awe and disbelief, as though assuring
himself that it was really he to whom such things had happened.

"I don't believe there's any kind of fighting I haven't seen," he
declared; "hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets, grenades, gun
butts. I've seen 'em on their knees in the mud choking each other,
beating each other with their bare fists. I've seen every kind of
airship, bomb, shell, poison gas, every kind of wound. Seen whole
villages turned into a brickyard in twenty minutes; in Servia seen
bodies of women frozen to death, bodies of babies starved to
death, seen men in Belgium swinging from trees; along the Yzer for
three months I saw the bodies of men I'd known sticking out of the
mud, or hung up on the barb wire, with the crows picking them.

"I've seen some of the nerviest stunts that ever were pulled off
in history. I've seen _real_ heroes. Time and time again I've seen
a man throw away his life for his officer, or for a chap he didn't
know, just as though it was a cigarette butt. I've seen the women
nurses of our corps steer a car into a village and yank out a
wounded man while shells were breaking under the wheels and the
houses were pitching into the streets." He stopped and laughed
consciously.

"Understand," he warned me, "I'm not talking about myself, only of
things I've seen. The things I'm going to put in my book. It ought
to be a pretty good book--what?"

My envy had been washed clean in admiration.

"It will make a wonderful book," I agreed. "Are you going to
syndicate it first?"

Young Mr. Hamlin frowned importantly.

"I was thinking," he said, "of asking John for letters to the
magazine editors. So, they'll know I'm not faking, that I've
really been through it all. Letters from John would help a lot."
Then he asked anxiously: "They would, wouldn't they?"

I reassure