t to be there at all, but had wandered in from the
nearest field to see the show. An orchestral accompaniment was kept up,
even during the saddest recitation, by dozens of little pigs that
scrambled about in the farmyard and under the stage. And beyond the farm
swayed the tall poplars that stood along the road which led straight
away into the distance, whence came sudden flashes of light and the
long, dull rumble of the guns.

Of the programme itself, I have but the vaguest recollection, for the
programmes are the least interesting part of these performances. The
first item, I remember, was a dreadful sentimental song by Private
Higgs which accident converted from comparative failure into howling
success. Just as he was rendering the most affecting passage, Private
Higgs stepped back too far, the cart--of the two-wheeled
variety--overbalanced, and the sad singer was dropped down amongst the
little pigs below, to the great joy of the crowd.

Then came a Cockney humorist, who, in times of peace, was the owner of a
fried fish and chip barrow in that home of low comedians--the East End.
After him appeared Sergeant Andrews, disguised in one of Eliza's
discarded skirts, with a wisp of straw on his head to represent a lady's
hair. Some vulgar song he sang in a shrill, falsetto voice that caused
great dismay among the pigs, as yet unused to the vagaries of the
British soldier.

After the interval, during which the audience _en masse_ made a
pilgrimage to Eliza's back door to buy beer at a penny a glass, there
came the usual mixture of the vulgar and the sentimental, for nothing on
earth is more sentimental than a soldier. There was the inevitable
"Beautiful Picture in a Beautiful Golden Frame," and a recitation in
Yiddish which was well applauded simply because no man had any idea what
it was about. The Sergeant-Major gave a very creditable rendering of
"Loch Lomond" in a voice that would terrify a recruit, and we finished
up the evening with a song requesting a certain naughty boy to hold out
his hand, which was shouted by everyone with so much vigour that one
wondered how it was the men could still sing "God save the King" when
the time came.

And far into the night, when the farmyard lay still and ghostly, and the
pigs had gone off to bed, we still sat and talked in the "Officers'
Mess," and recalled jokes of George Robey and Harry Tate, or hummed over
the tunes we had heard at the last Queen's Hall concert. As the Capta