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Show A LADY WITH HER HAT OFF etTUST to talk to a woman" that becomes a privilege when a man has been shut up in a camp for months. And after he has gone across, it is a double privilege to talk to a woman who speaks his own language. An anonymous writer in "The London Daily Mail" tells of a doughboy who had that aspiration: "Where are you from, Bud?" I asked him as I slid into a seat next him in the Underground. "Me?" he said, surprised from his reveries. "I'm from Texas, sah." He had been on this side three months, he told me, and was stationed at a flying camp, and he was the only American there at the moment. "Do you know any one here?" I asked. "Not a soul." "Don't you go out at all on Sundays, Sun-days, for Instance?" "Well, I've been invited to several sort o' formal functions, teas and things, but I feel they are kind o' perfunctory per-functory invitations; and the two that I went to I felt like r if I was just invited 'cause I had to be. So I just sit around on Sundays now ! and write home and tinker with the old engine." When I asked him if he would spend next Sunday at my home the slits under un-der his sunburned brows became twinkling oases, and he inquired solemnly, sol-emnly, "Are you married?" I admitted ad-mitted I was, half apologetically; for I failed to understand his motive. "Gee!" ho retorted eagerly, "then I'll come! I'd just love to talk to a woman. I haven't talked to a woman for so long that " He broke off suddenly and contemplated the braid of his Bleeve for a moment; then, pulling himself together, he continued: con-tinued: "The nearest I get is when I write to my mother. I never know a fellow could get that way. Did you ever swear off smoking and there comes a day when you itch to do something and you can't think what it is? To see her drop a lump of sugar into a teacup and pass the jam. And, believe me, it isn't the tea or the jam; it's just well, you know a lady with her hat off! Yon know In her own house!" Town Talk. |