Private Edwin Horsemanden gave the title of his selection, a poetic selection. Some of his fellow privates looked puzzled. "'Oz Etaliahn?'—What does 'Oz Etaliahn' mean? Cherokee or Choctaw, which? Explain it to us, Eddy. Is it something to eat—or to drink? ''T is true, 'tis pity, 'tis pity 'tis 'tis true'—but most of us never went to college!... Oh, an opera house!—In Paris, do you say? Go on, Eddy, go on!"
| "At Paris it was, at the opera there,— And she looked like a queen in a book that night—" |
"Never saw one out of a book, did you?... Yes, I saw a gypsy queen once.... And the queen of the circus.... There's a man in Company D once saw the queen of England, saw her just as plain! She was wearing a scoop bonnet with pink roses around her face.... Sh! Shh!"
| "Of all the operas that Verdi wrote." |
"Who's Verdi?"
| "The best, to my taste, is the 'Trovatore.'" |
"'Trovatore?' Eddy, isn't that the serenading fellow who goes on singing till they hang him? Oh, Lord, yes! And the anvil chorus! The anvil chorus comes in there. Go on, Eddy. We feel perfectly at home."
| "And Mario" |
"Hm! stumped again."
| "can sooth with a tenor note The souls in Purgatory." |