Handsome, generous, brave, highly competent in military art, he was as skillful in getting action from his giant gun as he was masterful in evoking music from his violin! If there was anything his platoon boys admired more, even than himself, it was the music of his ever generous, ever delighting violin. Deep in some dugout we would gather around him. Tenderly and fondly he would take the instrument from the battered box, patting it like a young mother her baby's cheek.
Beginning with some light popular air in which all would vocally join, he would soon glide like a spirit of melody to the unprofaned height of the music masters. Bach was his favorite. And when, with the mute, to soften the waves from unfriendly ears, he would interpret some symphony of the soul, we would forget our grim surroundings and dream we "dwelt in marble halls."
He knew my passionate fondness for music and took delight in pleasing me. What pictures he could paint on the canvas of my fancy! Under the spell of his music I would drop anchor in the harbor of the fairest dream. Now, it would be a landscape the brush of his bow would paint—a midsummer day with sheep gently grazing on some hillside: again, it would be a forest, with treetops cowering before an on-rushing storm.
One evening he was playing with the mute on "Humoresque." His big brown eyes, that were not the least attractive feature of his handsome face, looked steadily into mine across the bridge of his violin.
"What is the picture tonight, Chaplain?"
Doctor Lugar and Aids Working in a Gas Attack Near Jolney.
"I see a coast," I replied; "it is a fair summer day, with waves of all blue and silver, dancing in the breeze. A yacht is just off shore; the sail, a creamy bit of color; at the tiller a chap, handsome as yourself, and at his side a girl"—here he stopped playing and looking intently at me exclaimed:
"Why, that's the very thing I was thinking of myself!"
Laying aside the violin he drew from his kit a bundle of letters tied with ribbon. Delightedly, radiantly, he showed me her picture—yes, her pictures, for surely he had twenty of them. Then he narrated "the sweetest story ever told"; how wonderful she was, how tenderly he loved her, how they had sacredly promised to marry on his return, and planned to seek their young fortunes in South America.