beluggaged arrival of other
Americans, for in nine cases out of ten they came as absurdly
over-equipped as did we.

Our barracks, one of many built on the same pattern, was a long, low
wooden building, weather-stained without and whitewashed within. It
had accommodation for about forty beds. One end of the room was very
manifestly American. There was a phonograph on the table, baseball
equipment piled in one corner, and the walls were covered with
cartoons and pictures clipped from American periodicals. The other end
was as evidently French, in the frugality and the neatness of its
furnishings. The American end of the room looked more homelike, but
the French end more military. Near the center, where the two nations
joined, there was a very harmonious blending of these characteristics.

Drew and I were delighted with all this. We were glad that we were not
to live in an exclusively American barracks, for we wanted to learn
French; but more than this, we wanted to live with Frenchmen on terms
of barrack-room familiarity.

By the time we had given in our papers at the captain's office and had
passed the hasty preliminary examination of the medical officer, it
was quite dark. Flying for the day was over, and lights gleamed
cheerily from the barrack-room windows. As we came down the principal
street of the camp, we heard the strains of "Waiting for the Robert E.
Lee," to a gramophone accompaniment, issuing from the _chambre des
Americains_.

"See them shuffle along,
Oh, ma honey babe,
Hear that music and song."

It gave us the home feeling at once. Frenchmen and Americans were
singing together, the Frenchmen in very quaint English, but hitting
off the syncopated time as though they had been born and brought up to
it as we Americans have.

Over in one corner, a very informal class in French-English
pronunciation was at work. Apparently, this was tongue-twisters'
night. "_Heureux_" was the challenge from the French side, and
"_Hooroo_" the nearest approach to a pronunciation on the part of the
Americans, with many more or less remote variations on this theme. An
American, realizing how difficult it is for a Frenchman to get his
tongue between his teeth, counter-challenged with "Father, you are
withered with age." The result, as might have been expected, was a
series of hissing sounds of _z_, whereupon there was an answering howl
of derision from all the Americans. Up and down the length of the room
there