isgusted with the
news of peace. They had made an immense journey to go actively into
war, and emerged from the ocean solitude to police a city in time of
peace. It was their notion that they lacked occupation; that their
adventure had proved an enterprise that could not become glorious.

The romance of war faded. Unquiet sensations were produced by the
stories that there was nothing to do but go home, and they would
soon be placed aboard the transports and homeward bound. Besides,
the climate was depressing. The days were hot and the nights were not
refreshing. The rations were better and there were dry places to sleep,
but there was no inspiring excitement, and it was not a life worth
living. War--"the front"--instead of offering incomparable varieties,
became tedious--it was a bore, in fact. How could a crowded city and
thronged streets be attractive in a military sense, or the scene of
patriotic sacrifice, when the most arduous duty was that of police? Was
it for this they had left homes in Oregon, Montana, Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, Tennessee, Nebraska, Utah, California and Colorado?

There came an episode of homesickness. It was about time in a soldier's
life to contrast it with the farms and the villages, the shops,
mines and manufactories. They were kept busy on guard and in caring
for themselves, in activities as the masters of a strange community,
but the novelties of the tropics lost their flavor. What did a man
want with oranges when there were apples? What was a rice swamp
compared with a corn field? Think of the immeasurable superiority,
as a steady thing, of an Irish potato to a banana, or a peach to a
pineapple! What was a Chinese pony alongside a Kentucky horse, or a
water buffalo with the belly of a hippopotamus and horns crooked as
a saber and long as your arm to one who had seen old-fashioned cows,
and bulls whose bellowing was as the roaring of lions? The miserable
but mighty buffaloes were slower than oxen and, horns and all, tame
as sheep--the slaves of serfs!

As for the Chinese, if there were no other objection, they should
be condemned because too numerous--faithful, perhaps, in a way, but
appearing with too much frequency in the swarming streets. And the
women, with hair hanging down their backs, one shoulder only sticking
out of their dresses, the skin shining like a scoured copper kettle; a
skirt tight around the hips and divided to show a petticoat of another
tint, a jacket offering furthe