“The same place I got it,” said the captain.

“And what is it?”

“I don’t know.”

We adjourned to the diner. A sign there said: “ Non Fumeurs. ” The captain pointed to it.

“That’s brief enough,” he said. “That’s once when the French is concise. But you ought to see the Chinese for that. I was in a town near the British front recently where some Chinese laborers are encamped. In the station waiting-room, it says: ‘No Smoking’ in French, English, Russian and Italian. The Russian is something like ‘Do notski smokevitch,’ and the Italian is ‘Non Smokore.’ Recently they have added a Chinese version, and it’s longer than the Bible. A moderate smoker could disobey the rules forty times before he got through the first chapter and found out what they were driving at.”