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Lastly, the Captain of Marines; he was the musician of the Mess, much in demand at sing-songs; editor, moreover, of the Wardroom magazine, a periodical whose humour was of a turn mercifully obscure to maiden aunts.
"That is to say, I used to at the sing-songs in France at sergeants' messes, and so on. But perhaps you mightn't consider it singing if you heard me," I ended lightly. "Very good, very good," he observed absent-mindedly. "And you can drive a Rolls?" "I can drive a Rolls and several other cars as well," I answered. "I was a driver in the R. A. S. C. early in the war."
She ran a canteen for the boys, boiling eggs, serving tea, cocoa, malted milk, bread-and-butter, and biscuits. She played games. She started and inspired sing-songs. She listened with sympathy which was quite unaffected to long tales of wrongs suffered, of woes and of joys.
He didn't like the sing-songs, and so he went down with pneumonia. I rootled round the camp, and found Tertius gassing about as a D.A.Q.M.G., which, God knows, he isn't cut out for. Tertius volunteered like a shot, and we settled it with the authorities, and out we went forty Pathans, Tertius, and me, looking up the road-parties.
This has been brought home to me as I have sat at sing-songs and have heard a coon-song sung entitled "The Preacher and the Bear." With apologies to the easily-shocked I will quote. The hero of the song is a coloured minister who, against his conscience, went out shooting on a Sunday, and, after good sport, on returning home was met by a grizzly bear.
Once there, he never again strays, although the pompadoured, white-aproned siren sing-songs in his ear the praises of Irish stew, and pork with apple sauce. Emma McChesney was eating her solitary supper at the Berger house at Three Rivers, Michigan. She had arrived at the Roast Beef haven many years before.
After a time the sing-songs in a trench some little distance away from "Leicester Lounge" knocked spots off all the others anywhere, thanks to the acquisition of a piano for them probably the only instrument of its kind which has ever been in the British trenches at the front. It came from "Dirty Dick's." The picture of "Dirty Dick's" gives a rough idea of the devastation of war.
The dirt and drudgery of rest bivouacs were assuaged by bathing, and by jolly "missing word competitions" and "sing-songs," as well as our courses of lectures and discussions on history, politics, the War, and the England to arise after the War. Talk gravitated again and again to the tragedy of the 4th June.
Even to-day, it is not rare for a man from Ambrym to settle for a while on Malekula, so as to be initiated into some rites which he then imports to Ambrym; and the Ambrymese pay poets large fees to teach them poems which are to be sung at certain feasts, accompanied by dances. Unhappily, I never had occasion to attend one of these "sing-songs."
"The other houses despise us on their account. We're the Dervish Camp to the rest." "As for the niggers, they shall do something for Biffen's too," said Acton, rather thoughtfully. "You mean in the sing-songs? Well, they'll spare the burnt cork certainly." "Well, that's an idea too," said Acton, laughing, "but not the one I had. That will keep."
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