id "Yes" too.

"Well, I shook hands with that man, and I promised him for my mother's
sake that I'd kneel down and say my prayers to-night."

And the little chap under the blanket jumped up, blanket and all, and
said, "So did I. I'm with you."

And the others said, "So did we."

"Well," the last comer said, "the best thing we can do is to kneel down
now and say a little prayer."

So they all knelt down, and they each said a little prayer--I wish I had a
record of those prayers--and they finished up with "Our Father."

Then the champion swearer said, "Boys, I've cut it all out: no more
drink--not another drop."

And they said, "All right, we are with you. We'll cut it out."

Then he said, "I've cut something else out. No more swearing."

Eighty-five times out of every hundred that the boys in France use a
swear-word they mean no more than I do when I say, "Great Scott."

"Do you, boys?" I ask them.

"No, sir," they invariably reply.

"Well, then, why do you use these swear-words?"

And then I've got them and, out of their own mouths, they are condemned. I
tell them it is bad form, and I say, "Cut it out."

These boys made a solemn compact that night that the first man who swore
should clean all nine guns, and before the week was out my champion was
cleaning nine guns.

But those eight boys didn't go back on him. They were sporty.

I have seen a little bird's nest all broken with the wind and torn with
the storm, and two or three little eggs, with a few wet leaves over them,
addled and cold and forsaken, and my little gipsy heart cried over those
poor little motherless things, for I was motherless too. And up in a tree
I have heard a thrush singing the song of a seraph and I have said, as I
looked at the eggs, "You would have been singers too, but you were
forsaken."

These boys--they did not forsake their chum. They said, "Buck up, old boy.
We'll help you."

"No," he said. "This is my job."

So they stood by him and cheered him on. People, I say again, don't die of
overmuch love, but for the want of a bit of it. These boys stood by my
champion swearer, and when he was putting the polishing touches on the
last gun he stood up, his face radiant, like a man that has fought a
battle and won: "Boys, this is the last gun I shall clean for anybody
under these conditions, because, God helping me, I'm going to see this
thing through."

And he _is_ seeing it through.

* *