YOU'LL have a hilarious time from the first page to the last in reading this rollicking tale of a trip through England and France in the happier days before the lights went out. Cornelia Otis Skinner, the actress, and her friend Emily Kimbrough are the chief characters.

 "Emily," Cornelia said, "attracts trouble the way blue serge attracts lint." But it was, after all, Cornelia who came down with measles and a great many complications. Emily did nearly drown a man, but her intention was only to be helpful; and when she hit an English nobleman in the face, it was unpremeditated and in sport. Certainly the shipwreck was not the fault of either of them, though Cornelia has always averred that the mere fact of Emily's being there helped bring it about.

They were young, and their hearts were gay. They were earnest, too, about "doing things really worthwhile," and "getting the most out of everything." So they studied at the Sorbonne, and with teachers at the Comedie Francaise, but they learned other things they'd never dreamed of, and swallowed them, round-eyed and gulping.

They were every young American on the first trip abroad. They discovered and they owned Europe, or such part of it as they awkwardly cantered over, and they adored almost everything they encountered.

This special edition of OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough has been made available to the Armed Forces of the United States through an arrangement with the original publisher, Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc., New York.

Editions for the Armed Services, Inc., a non-profit organization established by the Council on Books in Wartime

                                  Please visit my store for additional interesting ASE titles.