Over the Seas for Uncle Sam

by Unknown

And the Marseillaise! How they did sing that! three and four times, shouting the chorus until the rafters shook!

Then Louis pounded on the table for order.

"The American officer will now sing his National Anthem," he announced.

There was instant silence, then encouraging applause, then silence.

"But yes, you will sing it," urged Angele, seeing my panic.

Now, in the first place, I cannot carry a tune and in the second place I knew just one verse of the "Star Spangled Banner"—and I was not over sure of that one!

I have never felt a shame equal to mine as I struggled desperately through the first verse of my country's song! They applauded madly. I might have been Caruso to judge from the racket they made.

But Louis was not satisfied.

"Permit me also to sing it for you," he said, and sing it he did—all three verses of it,—with a ring to his voice that thrilled me and held me spellbound. I asked him where he had learned it. It seems, he modestly explained, an American ambulance driver had employed his time in the trenches teaching it to him.