"If you were the only girl in the world,

And I were the only boy,

Nothing else would matter in the world to-day,

We could go on loving in the same old way;

A Garden of Eden just made for two,

With nothing to mar our joy;

I would say such wonderful things to you,

There would be such wonderful things to do,

If you were the only girl in the world,

And I were the only boy."

Sometimes the imagination will wander into the days that are to be--for some--and they sing,

"We don't want a lot of flags flying,

We don't want your big brass bands;

We don't want a lot of speechifying,

And we don't want a lot of waving hands;

We don't want a lot of interfering,

When we've safely crossed the foam;

But we do want to find the girls we left behind,

When we all come marching home."

Will the girls remember! The words are not without tragedy. How deeply some of the men love may perhaps never be realized by those at home. The longing of their hearts is, at times, almost unbearable. A captain, past middle life, took my arm one day and led me aside. He was, he said, a little anxious about himself, for he was getting into the habit of taking more drink than he was wont to take. He had been taking it when he felt lonely and depressed to ease the longing of his heart.

"I never touch it at home," he said, "the society of my dear little wife is all the stimulant I need. I would give the world to be with her now--just to sit in my chair and watch her at her sewing or knitting. The separation is too much for me and, you know, it has lasted nearly three years now."

I have caught this yearning in more than one of the songs our soldiers sing, but especially in the following, which is called "Absent":

"Sometimes, between long shadows on the grass,

The little truant waves of sunlight pass;

My eyes grow dim with tenderness, the while

Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile.

"And sometimes in the twilight gloom, apart,

The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart;

From my fond lips the eager answers fall,

Thinking I hear thee, thinking I hear thee call."

The men's thoughts pass easily from the sweetheart to the mother who bore them, and we have a third class, the Home Song. I have been awakened in the night by men, going up to the line, singing "Keep the Home Fires Burning." It is very thrilling to hear in the dead of night, when every singer is within range of the enemy's guns.

Another great favorite is,

"They built a little garden for the rose,

And they called it Dixie-land;

They built a summer breeze to keep the snows

Far away from Dixie-land;

They built the finest place I've known,

When they built my home sweet home;

Nothing was forgotten in the land of cotton,

From the clover to the honey-comb,

And then they took an angel from the skies

And they gave her heart to me.

She had a bit of heaven in her eyes

Just as blue as blue can be;

They put some fine spring chickens in the land,

And taught my Mammy how to use a frying pan.

They made it twice as nice as paradise,

And they called it Dixie-land."