come and give adequate expression to feelings which they felt
to be beyond their range.

To show you the extent of his fame, it is only necessary to mention
that Lieutenant ---- composed an ode all about Private Thompson and
got it published in _Camouflage_, the trench gazette of the Nth
Division. Two of the verses went, as far as I can remember, something
like this:--

As Private Thompson used to say,
He couldn't stand the War;
He cursed about it every day
And every night he swore;
And, while a sense of discipline
Carried him on through thick and thin,
The mud, the shells, the cold, the din
Annoyed him more and more.

The words with which we others cursed
Seemed mild and harmless quips
Compared to those remarks that burst
From Private Thompson's lips;
Haven't you ever heard about
The Prussian Guard at X Redoubt,
How Thompson's language laid them out
Before we came to grips?

Anyhow, after bespattering the air of France and Flanders with a
barrage of anathemas for the best part of a year, Private Thompson did
something creditable in one of the pushes, and retired to a hospital
in England, whence he emerged a few months later with a slight limp, a
discharge certificate and a piece of coloured ribbon on his waistcoat.
Having expressed his opinion on hospital life, he returned to his
native town.

His first shock was when he was met at the station by the local band
and conducted up the Station Road and down the beflagged High Street
to the accompaniment of martial and patriotic strains. His second was
when he was confronted at the steps of the Town Hall by the Mayor and
an official gathering of the leading citizens, with an unofficial
background of the led ones, and found himself the subject of speeches
of adulation and welcome.

He was too dumbfounded to grasp all that was said, but he recovered
his senses in time to hear the Mayor assuring his audience that it
gave him great pleasure, indeed he might go so far as to say the very
greatest pleasure, to welcome on behalf of their town one who had
upheld with such distinction and bravery the reputation and honour of
the community. And that, although he did not wish to keep them any
longer, yet he must just add that he was going to ask Mr. Thompson
then and there, while the remembrance of his terrible hardships was
still fresh in his mind, to impart them to a phonograph, so that
the archives of the town might not lac