A LITTLE TOWN IN SENEGAL
WILL THOMPSON
in Everybody’s Magazine
Permission to reproduce in this book
I HEAR the throbbing music down the lanes of Afric rain:
The Afric spring is breaking, down in Senegal again.
O little town in Senegal, amid the clustered gums,
Where are your sturdy village lads, who one time danced to drums?
At Soissons, by a fountain wall, they sang their melodies;
And some now lie in Flemish fields, beside the northern seas;
And some tonight are camped and still, along the Marne and Aisne;
And some are dreaming of the palms that bend in Afric rain.
The music of the barracks half awakes them from their dream;
They smile and sink back sleepily along the Flemish stream.
They dream the baobab’s white buds have opened over-night;
They dream they see the solemn cranes that bask in morning light:
I hear the great drums beating in the square across the plain.
Where are the tillers of the soil, the gallant, loyal train?
O little town in Senegal, amid the white-bud trees,
At Soissons, in Picardy, went north the last of these!
A LITTLE GRIMY-FINGERED GIRL
LEE WILSON DODD
in The Outlook
Permission to reproduce in this book
In sending his permission to use this sharp flash of the spirit of France, Mr. Dodd wrote: “It may interest you to know that the little grimy-fingered girl is real, and that I bought ‘L’Intrans’ from her every evening for many months during the dark days of last spring in Paris.” The spring referred to being that of 1918, when the Germans were only a few miles from the city.