'I'm feeling sentimental, Mr. Hornung. I want a love-story,' he sighed one afternoon. I reminded him that he would also want Good Stuff, and succeeded in meeting all his needs with _Ships that Pass in the Night_.
Next day we had our Quiet Room Evening with Tom Hood; and that was the time I strayed upon delicate ground by way of 'The Bridge of Sighs,' from poem to subject before I knew where I was. The men took it beautifully, and touched my heart by impulsively applauding the very things I should have feared to say to them upon reflection. As for our Coldstreamer, he came straight up to the counter and took out Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living and Dying_!
Not a day but some winning thing was said or done by one or other of them. A man whom I hardly knew had been changing his book when he heard me talking about green envelopes.
'Do you want a green envelope?' he asked point-blank.
Now, the point about the 'green envelope' is the printed declaration on the outside, that the contents 'refer to nothing but private and family matters'; this being signed by the sender, your letter is censorable only at the base, and will not be read by anybody with whom you are in daily contact. There is, I believe, a weekly issue of one of these envelopes per man. This I only remembered as the generous soul was turning away.
'Don't you go giving me anything you want yourself!' I called after him.
He just looked over his shoulder. 'Then it wouldn't be much of a gift, would it?' was all he said; but I shall never give a copper to a crossing-sweeper without trying to forget his words.
That man was a driver in the R.H.A., and beyond the fact that he had just been reading _The White Company_ I know nothing about him. They cropped up under every cap-badge, these crisp, articulate, enlightening men; they had shaken off their marching feet the dust of every walk in civil life, and it was only here and there a tenacious speck caught the eye. I _have_ heard a Southern in Jock's clothing work in a word about the season-ticket and the 'silk hat' of his City days; but as a rule a soldier no more thinks of trading upon his civilian past than a small boy at a Public School dreams of bragging about his people. More than in any community on earth, the man at the front has to depend upon his own personality, absolutely without any extraneous aid whatsoever; and the knowledge that he has to do so is a tremendous sharpener of individuality.