, I observed that the
guards for the train had their overcoats. So I do not vouch for the
accuracy of his explanation.

It was getting late in the afternoon and the fifth train to pull in from
the south since our advent on the spot--or possibly it was the sixth--
had just halted when, from the opposite direction, a troop-train, long
and heavy, panted into sight and stopped on the far track while the men
aboard it got an early supper of hot victuals. We crossed over to have
a look at the new arrivals.

It was a long train, drawn by one locomotive and shoved by another, and
it included in its length a string of flat cars upon which were lashed
many field pieces, and commandeered automobiles, and even some family
carriages, not to mention baggage wagons and cook wagons and supply
wagons. For a wonder, the coaches in which the troops rode were new,
smart coaches, seemingly just out of the builders' hands. They were
mainly first and second class coaches, varnished outside and equipped
with upholstered compartments where the troopers took their luxurious
ease. Following the German fashion, the soldiers had decorated each car
with field flowers and sheaves of wheat and boughs of trees, and even
with long paper streamers of red and white and black. Also, the artists
and wags of the detachment had been busy with colored chalks. There was
displayed on one car a lively crayon picture of a very fierce,
two-tailed Bavarian lion eating up his enemies--a nation at a bite.
Another car bore a menu:

Russian caviar

Servian rice meat English roast beef

Belgian ragout French pastry

Upon this same car was lettered a bit of crude verse, which, as we had
come to know, was a favorite with the German private. By my poor
translation it ran somewhat as follows:

For the Slav, a kick we have,
And for the Jap a slap;
The Briton too--we'll beat him blue,
And knock the Frenchman flat.

Altogether the train had quite the holidaying air about it and the men
who traveled on it had the same spirit too. They were Bavarians--all
new troops, and nearly all young fellows. Their accouterments were
bright and their uniforms almost unsoiled, and I saw that each man
carried in his right boot top the long, ugly-looking dirk-knife that the
Bavarian foot-soldier fancies. The Germans always showed heat when they
found a big service clasp-knife hung about a captured Englishman's neck
on a lanyard, calling it a barbarous weapon because of th