Paris, August 9, 1914.

Gentle readers, have you, I wonder, ever made the acquaintance of a man named Kaspar Hauser? Intellectuals among you, should these humble notes ever reach a form to seek any such, will perhaps remember the exact number of a certain magazine with a reddish-yellow cover, published in Boston, out of which Miss Huntley used to read to her metaphysical class the details of the « Strange Case of Kaspar Hauser. »

Kaspar Hauser was the « unacknowledged » son of a bishop, or perhaps of a Cardinal, the magazine used to say, at which I, being a Catholic, would smile to myself, when I did not give vent to my youthful convictions, being careful in either case to tell nothing about it at home, for I liked Miss Huntley with all her Boston scolding of us Baltimoreans for not giving Edgar Allen Poe a decent grave, and, better still, did I like Mrs. Lefevbre, who was as Southern as Miss Huntley was Northern, and above all, our cosmopolitan Mr. Daves, who wisely read us from the unexpurgated edition of Shakespeare what the expurgated one left out.

Free-thinking, indeed, after the convent in which we had been raised, so it is not remarkable that I should have kept Kaspar Hauser and his parentage to myself and that, while resenting him I also cherished him, in a way, because be gave me the only chance I had of feeling superior to one so advanced as, even in my youthful rebellion, I knew Miss Huntley to be; just as I knew that Kaspar Hauser was not the son of a cardinal, any more than of a bishop, but merely of someone mean enough to torture him rather than kill him. How he came by his Germanic appellation the Boston magazine did not think worth while to inform us, sufficient it was that the people accountable for Kaspar Hauser permitted him to pass his life, until manhood, in a solitary, dark cell so that in emerging from it he learned as a man the things that he should have learned as a baby, --- his sensations in doing so being his excuse for making my acquaintance and fastening himself upon my sympathy.

Reason quite as legitimate as that of many another of his sex who has since followed in his footsteps! May they in the end prove as worthy as Kaspar Hauser! How often have I reached out to him with gratitude in this past week, as one who could understand, during these hours in which we in Paris have lived through babyhood, childhood, maturity, the entire « Strange Case of Kaspar Hauser » and encore! as the French say.

Riding in taxis with French soldiers, or their wives, or sisters, that we never have laid eyes on before, through streets shaded by much bravery of gay, new bunting is now no more an event than an American woman's dining alone at the Café de Paris because she receives two days afterwards the letter telling her that the people who asked her to meet them there had left town in an auto some hours before. None of these nonconventions count in the levelling hand of war. But I mention the ones in question because of a ride and a dinner that a week ago were too extraordinary for any words to describe.

On mobilisation morning, at an early hour, I seem to have started out with the idea that things of the old life must be finished, while the new order still permitted; idea evidently shared by the whole of Paris, people were hurrying so I thought I must be in New York.

Finally, at the Boulevard I found a taxi, not five minutes after, passing the Gare Saint-Lazare, a policeman signalled and ran forward with a young Infantry soldier whom he literally thrust into the cab beside me, when it was found that my direction was also that of the soldier's barracks; fortunately, for I was politely informed that, in view of the sudden demand for vehicles, I might be permitted to give up mine if I did not care to take the soldier in.

The fantassin in question was neither tall nor short, as he stood in his big, blue coat with its corners buttoned back over his baggy, red trousers; his smooth shaven face was neither handsome nor the reverse, but I noticed, as he was taking his seat beside me (the refractory lock of the Chariot of Mars once adjusted), that he had a pair of nice, honest blue eyes lighting an open countenance. He attracted my immediate interest by remarking upon the coincidence of his wife's being an American, Miss Strong of California, he said she was, and then he continued to talk on so absorbingly of the one, awful, all-engrossing subject that personalities were lost sight of and I never heard the present name of my Franco-countrywoman.

As we spun along through the sultry, overcast August atmosphere, he told me that the Grand Palais, the Cirque de Paris, parts of the Louvre ---literally every public building Paris --- were, like the gay Magic City, about to be converted into barracks for the mobilisation of the troops; that in another twenty-four hours the capital would be one vast caserne, as barracks are called.

In the face of this direct information, in spite of the anxious faced pedestrians hurrying past, I remained of the tenaciously optimistic, persisting that the war question was still but a question, repeating doggedly the countersign of peace people : the thing is not possible, it is not possible.

And, I added a personal deduction, drawn from the attitude of the French: they were so calm, these Latins could not be like that if it were really war; why, there was not even the usual First of May, Labour Day commotion.

« That is partly because the present danger is real ---was the soldier's immediate response, ---and partly because the Frenchman has gone through an evolution since he last faced such a danger. It is the modern Frenchman who has known your Anglo-Saxon influence, often educated in England, whom you will see leaving the capital by thousands, perhaps for ever, without one expression, one sign of regret. The traditional Frenchman of exaggerated word and gesture is fading away before a new France that will be the greatest of all. I may not live to see it, Madame, but I trust that you will be in Paris when the day comes, and perhaps you will remember my prediction. »

Here I gave in so far as to tell him about my friend Spiro, the Austrian painter, on Wednesday, or was it Thursday night, at Lavenue's, when my American attitude had greatly incensed him.

« You should go back to your own country --- Spiro had said --- for you evidently do not begin to realize how terrible it is all going to be. »

When I put down my trump card:

« But the Emperor William, he does not want war, he is a pacifist, » the Austrian laughed sardonically.

«Wilhelm Il a pacifist! Do you Americans really believe that? --- he interrogated excitedly? ---If you were of my part of the world you would not have to be told that he has been preparing this moment for the last twenty years. »

As the musical names of Eugen Spiro and his ex-wife, Tilla Durien, (the comedienne) are familiar enough at both the Courts of Vienna and Berlin, he should have known whereof he spoke, but his words had not in the least impressed me. The truth is, the whole thing was beyond my comprehension.

My first conviction of the terrible reality came very soon after this conversation, about mid-day: the expression of the women's faces. Pale and silent, their eyes fatal and wide-open, rarely tear stained, they moved rapidly about the city, on foot, in cabs, in taxis, laying in supplies, preparing for the men's departure, the word having gone forth that the end of the Inquisitory visit made by the police the preceeding evening was indeed to be consummated.

At four o'clock a hush came over the city, and the optimist bowed his head : the affiche of « MOBILISATION GENERALE » appeared upon the walls of every official building in Paris. People stopped in silent groups to read the words as though spellbound. Then, the women, as well as the men, entered their houses. The moment of farewell was clothed in an awesome silence.

Through a resumed rushing of taxis --- taxis full of officers, full of soldiers, full of women, full of children, full of trunks, of groceries, of bread, forgetting all speed limit in their race to the Gare de l'Est, for the soldiers, the Gare du Nord for the frightened strangers, millions of them, trying to get to England, to anywhere out of Paris --- I wended a way to dinner and my first war regiment, seen from the portals of Maxim's.

Yes, one might have wished for less of a comic opera background, but, after all, dinner-time-Maxims is to supper-time-Maxims what a Comédie-Française play is to a Palais-Royal farce --- that night it was a military problem play.

There were just three waiters left in the salle and the gaily comparisoned Cavalry officers who make it their place of rendez-vous (for the pleasure of observing whom my hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Carl Freund, had also made it their headquarters) went about the business of auxiliary garçons with such elegance and seriousness that ears were strained for the notes of Offenbach, and lips questioned: where are we, what does it mean?

To add to the illusion, Mademoiselle Sorel, of the Comedie Française, was recognized among the women, as taut as the men, in their severest travelling costumes.

Just as we were leaving, a regiment passed, my first war regiment. There was nothing of the play about that. I felt a lump in my throat, perhaps it was patriotism, « Patriotism, the most over-rated of vices, » as that cynical Scott, Johnnie Ferguson, used to say. I wish he had been there! How different it was from every preconceived idea: no cheering, no singing, no drum, I do not indeed recall if there was a flag. The crowd lining the curb, gave forth the only sound, a familiar, tender word of encouragement:

« Bravo, mes enfants! »

« Courage, mon petit! »

And the two hundred young men composing the Company smiled and bowed their thanks, as they marched rapidly by, their very silence saying : « A new France that will be the greatest of all. »

Paris, August 10, 1914.

The nostalgia of the old quarter has seemed, in our recent hours of new occupations, to actually out-balance the iron weight of war.

The more all-claiming war requisitioned our taxicabs, spirited away our auto-buses and closed our « Metro » gates, the oftener would I look to the South and say: if I could only get over to Montparnasse!

As I stood in classless lines before railroad stations and registry bureaux, to help some departing friend with her papers, (noting familiar heads, those of Senator Depew, Judge Garey, among the intervening masses before the little window that moved off like a mirage) my inward comment would be : I'll wager they're managing this better at Montparnasse.

As I looked across the Square at another and another regiment going down the Rue de Richelieu, row after row, of the sturdy little culottes rouges, even more strongly stamped to-day than they were a week ago with the marks of that ungrateful expression, the business of war, a degree more philosophically indifferent to their heavy uniforms, always a size or so too big; (for in this week the English Ally has declared itself, and the German enemy has betrayed itself, with its condemningly puerile pretext) as I took my coffee reading newspapers that seemed of a hundred years ago, with a few typographical errors, and went to my bed of racking dreams of how we might correct them, Montparnasse stood by like a promised land.

Oh, for the painters of Montparnasse! You would have joined me in exclaiming, had you entered with me into the court-yard of my police in the rue d'Amboise that sweltering night: under the voûte (the archway between door and court yard proper) a long line of tables, lighted by flickering candles, were strewn with seals, inkstands and the impressive, printed papers with which we aliens must immune ourselves; two patrolmen had just lead in a poor, half crazed Turk, clad in oriental rags; one of his goalers was at the moment in the act of throwing into the circle of a sputtering candle's light a handful of watches, gold chains and other accusing baubles; on the faces of the crowd, drawn back to make room for the group, lines of scorn, indifference, pity, were dramatically accentuated by the shadows; behind the tables, the officers of the law sat with imperturbable countenances.

When, at last, the polite secretary, Monsieur Michel, announced my turn, with a sign of recognition, that railroad affair, by which I had made his acquaintance some weeks before, in the now insufficient bureau upstairs, arose like a benediction. The introduction to one's police is an ordeal well past at the best.

The following afternoon it was that I said to the little bonne:

« Marie go over to the Avenue de l'Opera and stay, there until you can bring me something on wheels to take me to the other side of the water. »

One of my confrères had asked me to find Gustave Hervé, who lives in the rue de Vaugirard. He was not at home when, about an hour after the above injunction, I arrived at the modest apartment by the calm Luxembourg. In the emotion of that moment, before the simple dwelling of the only man that the Government of the Republic feared, I thought ---yes, I thought of stables in Bethlehem and cots in gentle Nazareth. Hervé the Socialist, who has been imprisoned eleven times, is to-day the grandest patriot in France because he has refused to turn to his own advantage the tide of circumstances arising from the assassination of the Socialist Deputé Jean Jaurès and that still more remote blot, the Caillaux trial.

Through the Luxembourg I strolled across to Montparnasse. The home of the artist gods was, indeed, tranquil---everybody had gone! The old Boulevard was peopled only with spectres, spectres of that golden age, the passing of which I arrived in Paris just in time to see. In the sun rays slanting from behind the Eiffel Tower they came, becomingly coiffed with their haloes of time:

« La Belle Marthe », Fournier's handsome model, (now la Grande Chenal of the Opera) the Trilby of the Quarter, with the Duncans, Isadora and Raymond, as somewhat lesser stars, in their familiar Greek costumes ; and divinely tall Kathleen Bruce (now Lady Scott) as fair as one of her own statues and just as oblivious of all but Walt Whitman; and dear Louise Llewellyn, singing snatches of Folk Songs between protracted quotations from « Cosmic Consciousness » ; and sweet, colleen-like Helen Rogers (now Mrs. Ogden Reid) always getting orchids and opera invitations; and little, little Gertrude Partington with her big and bigger etching plates (the time we went to Italy, she and Jean Moffett and I, her whole fortune was invested in open cabs to transport long canvas rolls protruding from either side) and pretty, clever Mary Eton, with her unrelenting cry: « You ought to join the Suffragettes, you stand in need of some big influence! » To which we would reply : « But I am left no time to do so from pondering the question as to whether it is the lack of an organiser or their inability to accept one which hinders me from joining your Suffragettes, and them from becoming a big influence. »

And then the heroes of us all : Jack Stark and Pat Rumsey, with their eternal discussions as to whether it was a pretty bonne or a working one that their co-operative, bachelor establishment stood in need of, while their own especial hero, Charles Hoffbauer (christened by Mr. Roland Knoedler, « the French painter who has'nt a French name ») was busy taking all the prizes at the Beaux-Arts; and the Breton sculptor, Count de Kerstret and his Russian-haired brother-in-law, Joe Davidson, debating anarchistic art with calm, Canadian Russell and turbulent, Irish Roeffy...

I felt like Du Maurier in the chapter « Ten Years After » when I reached the Gare --- and its barren cab-stand!

« The American Volunteers will meet this morning at eleven o'clock at 11 rue de Valois and after breakfasting at the Café de la Régence, by invitation of Mr. Cazmese, will proceed to their train at the Gare St. Lazare », announced a headless paragraph in to-day's Herald.

I wanted to see the man who went about organizing a regiment of Foreign Legioners in this sort of way, so I walked down to the office at ten and had the good fortune to meet Mr. Cazmese and spend the rest of the time before their departure with him and the men who have joined him.

When a word came that two photographers were waiting outside of the Café de la Régence to photograph our soldiers of fortune, just as déjeuner was finishing, I had the temerity to say : « Don't let them in ! »

And why this narrow minded interference? Because the whole story of that curious little band was one of the pen, (whether by line or letter) a story with which the prosaic camera had nothing to do. What could the camera tell of the go-as-you-please American spirit that pervaded the word and gesture of that heterogenous gathering of future Dukes of Milan?

To go back to ten o'clock : at the office in the Rue de Valois, which on its opposite side looks out upon the park of the Palais-Royal, an intermittent string of men kept passing through, stopping for a minute to say « Bonjour, Mademoiselle, » to the little, dark-eyed stenographer, who in recruiting days had evidently made many good friends, then going on to join groups beneath the trees of the historic gardens.. The neighbours, to my surprise, showed little, if any, curiosity. In these days of the unexpected everything seems so natural.

It was under those very trees, you will remember, that Camille Desmoulins made his speech which started the French Revolution ; a leaf plucked from one of them was the badge of himself and the throng that followed him. And now the folds of two big American flags were floating amid their low hanging branches!

These reflections were interrupted by a quickly spoken « What can I do for you? » in a voice richly foreign in tone but of American accent. Very characteristic it was of all that I know of Mr. Cazmese, the organiser who intrigued me.

In reply to a question, he briefly said that he was an American of Greek parentage; (his figure, his manner, every thing about him suggests the American, excepting his face which with its olive skin, black eyes and regular features, is very Greek), he had represented American machinery firms in France, he had grown fond of the land and the people, he thought well of their cause (that was just the way h put it) and his own occupation becoming impossible for the time being, it was the natural thing that he should join the fight. Then he had thought that others might wish to do, the same, and he soon found out that he was right, for over two hundred had grouped themselves about him. The story in a nutshell!

He turned back, after starting away, with a manner less business like, to say he'd be glad if I'd come on down with them to the breakfast and to stop and talk with the boys in the meantime if I cared to. A very kind, shy gleam of the brown eyes here.

I soon discovered that around 11 rue de Valois there, was no need for what is called « official optimism » --- the French Government wants everybody to look on the bright side. By spending several hours a day together on the Esplanade des Invalides, while awaiting mobilization, the men had already fraternized enough to know each other's funny spots. Mademoiselle pointed them out to me as they came around, calling each by his title, names evidently didn't count. There were, for instance, « the Sharpshooter », « the Newspaperman », « the Poet », « the Millionaire », the « U. S. regular », the « West Pointer », « the Kids » « the Fighter », the Dude », « the Aviator », « the Preacher », each authentic but the last, who was only a theological student.

Everybody was carrying a modest bundle : three shirts and a couple of pairs of stockings ; all but the « Dude » wore old clothes to be abandoned when the uniform is merited. Some of the men looked very prosperous, some were seedy, some were real Americans, others were Americans of foreign parentage, some few had never seen America. English was the language and the American democratic spirit prevailed --- which, by the way, is quite a different thing from the French spirit of démocratie. I saw that it went hard with one or two of the men to accept the mulatto volunteer in the foreign way but they did it, « all for the cause, » as the poet said.

A general undercurrent of amusement was caused by the « Sharpshooter's » trunk. Somewhere from the borderland of Mexico, the Sharpshooter », a man of forty, who had to all appearances seen pretty hard times, set great store by his trunk. The last man in the lot whom you'd think it of, he spent his last moments before starting in giving Mademoiselle explicit direction about the care of a big canvas covered box tied in a net work of old rope. On top of it, while he was talking, he was fastening a canvas bag. I must confess my curiosity as to the contents of both.

« Tell Cazmese I'll be back in a minute; I forgot some thing, » was a sort of countersign. Some of them even jumped into taxis and went home for whatever these mysterious forgotten necessities might be. They were certainly in every case quite small, for they all came back carrying just the same unpretentious bundle. Nothing could have been more unofficial, more unmilitary, more boyish, than the whole performance of these children of a larger growth. Great excitement prevailed when it was found that the « Poet », to whom, for some reason, the flags of the English volunteers had been entrusted for delivery had gone off and left them standing in the corner. (Later we saw them in the Place of the Gare St. Lazare, a brave pair of flags with a gold fringe, unfurled on either side of a French flag).

With the order: « The train or breakfast is going to be missed », we straggled over to the Régence. At the table I found the « Poet » at my left. He was a dreamer with deep set eyes and a pale, wan face. He wore a new, white « sweater » which he said he hoped he might « manage to hang on to ». He did'nt know just how it would go about keeping warm at night. He and the « U. S. Regular », whom he called « Major », had become great friends, the « Regular's », eccentric English passing as unheeded by him as by the « Dude » who sat as the « Regular's » right.

Everybody compared big, new jack knives and strong, new boots. All had had their hair snappered: the « Dude's » naturally being the shortest. The « Regular » produced a pack of cards and a packet of insect powder from his pockets, the two absolute necessities to a soldier's life, he said.

There were no formal toasts, no speeches. Although there was wine, I noticed that most of the men drank water. To those who wished to linger over coffee while the photos were being taken the leader made no objection. In fact I don't think he even noticed it.

Somebody asked « the Millionaire » his object in going.

« Everybody's object's about the same, I guess », he drawled after a moment's hesitation.

Yes, whatever the way of putting it, they unexceptionally realized that they would fight for Justice and Right.

When the flags were unfurled the « West Pointer » confided those of the United States to « the Kids », a pair of typical American college boys who said their father had sent them over to fight for the Land of Lafayette. Mighty glad they seemed to be of it too; the French Flag was given to the « Dude » because he had been in France the longest, since childhood. While all this was going on, Mr. Cazmese ran down to the « tabac » to get « those cigarettes ». He fell in at the end of the line.

We women followed in a cab with two nice looking Americans whom I had noticed before. They proved to be Mr. Kirby, of the Associated Press, and Mr. Gellett Burgess, who, as was soon disclosed, were the people back of the photographing!

Going down the Avenue de l'Opéra, all along the line, the volunteers were greeted with cheers. Despite « unofficialism » the United States Consulate force made a great ovation from the balcony. The men behind the flags sang snatches of Star Spangled Banner and Yankee Doodle.

Mr. Burgess found it was not continuous enough; he wished and wished for a foot ball coach. Finally at the Opera he jumped from the cab and marched alongside them, leading the singing with great success. He was so much in earnest that one liked him for it.

Just before reaching the Gare St.-Lazare, a tall French Cavalry Officer stood in salute upon the curb. You could plainly see his eyes grow misty; the men noticed it and with one spontaneous voice they shouted:

« Vive la France! »

The sight of the Place before the Gare, filled with an enthusiastic crowd of persons of other foreign-nation allies and their friends added to the deeper feeling produced by the officer's salute : here was the English group, there the Russians, while many, many Americans awaited « our boys », the last to arrive.

Some women tied big bunches of flowers upon the American standards with long ribbons of tricolor. Then amid one great, prolonged cheer the English, the Russian, and the American flags passed under the archway of the Gare.

Paris, August 20, 1914.

It is not, what are the women doing, but, what are the women not doing; not, what are the women going to do, but, what are the women not going to do, that would appear to be the question. How shall I put it? We have done very well, but not in the manner that I should have expected.

Just as the war broke out, I was adding the finishing strokes to an article on French Feminism (suggested by Mr. Robert Yard) which had taken every spare minute in. the past three or four months; the more thoroughly I studied, the popular antebellum subject, from the American, English, French, Scandinavian, German, standpoints, the more did I wonder why, until then, I had never gone quite thoroughly into it. The unostentatiously persistent, route which French women had taken to their ends pleased me especially, in our age of advertising, they had done far more than any of us realised and I was rather glad to be the one to herald the fact.

Then came the war. War in the Age of Feminism! I am still asking myself as I did the first day, where are my companions of the last three or four months? Where is Jean Finot, author of Problems and Prejudices of Sex, the high priest of the cause? Were is Madame Sergine, chief aggressor in War of the Roses, who would lead the suffragette of France into battle with a bouquet in her hand and a rose upon her belt, as the arms symbolic of her sex? Where is Madame Maria Verone, the model feministe who directs her household and family as well as she does a case in court? Where are Jane Addams and Madame Siegfried, grand philanthrophists, and Mrs. Pankurst and Mrs. Belmont well meaning belligerents? Where are they all ?

In the passing on of that cherished tradition of the foreign observer, the superiority of the French woman over the man, I have never heard any reservation with regard to l'Armée. Now, the French army was far from ready for this war that so suddenly called it forth, yet, in a day it had requisitioned its every material need, in a week it was said to have overcome the internal dissensions inevitable to any great body, to have solidified its efficacious rebuttal of an incomparably organised attack.

But we have yet to hear of the spiritual mobilisation of feminism, which we might have expected from her whose toxin was : « That which the woman wishes God wishes ». The electric wires below the sea and the waves of fluid above it have not been denied her to reach the fellow soldier scattered over the entire globe, not confined to any particular kingdoms, like the armies she has refused to combat.

Those women of the twentieth Century whose claim was their establishment of a new reign of peace, have bowed to brute strength without one more sign of rebellion than the patient Griseldas of the Moyen Age who buckled on the armor of their lord as he went forth to battle and busied themselves with the land and its serfs until he returned.

We have reached back to them, for our proto-type over the head of our grand Condorcet, three or four hundred years behind his liberal words written in 1790 [Journal of the Society of 1789 no. July 1790,].

« In the name of what principle, in the name of what right do we bar women out of the public functions of a Republican State? I cannot see why. The word représentation nationale signifies representation of the Nation. Are not the women a part of the Nation? This assembly has for its end the constitution and maintenance of the people. Do not the women form a part of the French people? The right to elect and be elected is founded for the men on their title of being intelligent, free creatures. Are not the women free and intelligent? »

The demobilisation of women's work, might seem a better title for so much pessimism. No, we have done very well, only it has not been exactly in the way that some may have expected. The success has been with those who have accepted the little duty that lay nearest and performed it submissively like that Mary who chose the better part, while those who have struggled with the question, what shall I do? have only arrived at another, what shall I not do?

Our Marys and Griseldas of 1914 are sitting beneath the trees of our Adamless Eden, the Champs-Elysées, stitching, stitching, stitching, on a Red Cross shirt. It is the hand that holds the needle, not that which grasps for the sword or pen, that is counting.

Organisation is coming on, organisation of men aided by the women. Already much as been accomplished by it. It is the women of the people who have most conspicuously, risen to the occasion, they have taken their husbands place, at the helm: as street car conductors, « metro » guardians, street sweepers, etc., performing civic labor generally under men's direction.

I went one day to a meeting of the prospective American Ambulance. Dr. Magnien arose and said: « We must have five hundred thousand dollars to start with, we must do the thing well, or not at all. How shall we get the money? » The idea was there, big enough. Then a woman spoke: « We might put up subscription booths in the American department stores. » The reply to this came quickly, from another woman I am glad to say: « What's to become of those broken heads, and shattered legs that are falling each minute in Lille and Liège, while the women in America are running past our booths to the bargain counters? » A man said that the way to do the thing promptly was through the banks and newspapers in the United States, the wealthy ones in Paris, in the meantime, taking the emergency part.

I noticed that one woman who was a presence did not address the meeting and I recalled a word that I heard spoken about her the night that the Astruc Opera opened in Paris : « Mrs. Vanderbilt » (it was she) « always sits in the back of her box, yet she is more in evidence than any woman in the front row. »

The provocation of the above remark runs thus : the person quoted had just met Astruc hurrying through the corridor on his way to establish order in the environs of a loge where a bevy of pretty, American women and the Aga Khan, after two humbly warning visits from the gorgeous bebuttoned flunkies, were still trying their best to talk down the music (the « Benvenuto » of Berlióz). The impresario's fine, Semitic features were white with emotion, he alone knew how much the holding together of that Neo-Grec bubble that was « Astruc's » depended on its American support.

« Is it an American custom to talk during the music? » was his timorous query.

« I wish you would put that question to Mrs.. Vanderbilt », was the indignant, music-respecting American's retort.

From the Ambulance meeting I followed in the footsteps of Miss Minnie Tracy to the Mairie of the VIIIth arrondissement where a splendid work is already in progress. There the bread line is longer than anywhere else in Paris, owing to a poster encountered all over the city 'asking the hungry to come, as his friends and guests, to its maire, Dr. Maréchal. He has in this simple way replied to the various discussions arising from bureaucratic, red tape. Well known women are toiling to help him, some of them twenty hours a day: beginning with door to door visits to seek out the timid and ending by literally feeding them.

Nobody is hungry, despite the fact that Paris twice a day is a mesh of bread lines, awaiting the soupe at the various Mairies, town halls of each ward. As to the bad results of this wholesale charity, of which we hear dark hints from time to time, for most of the people it is. not charity at all, they have a right to all they get, because the war has deprived them of their means of support; those who are, « better off than they ever were », are so few in number that they do not count.

If there is anyone who has gained it is the French « jeune fille » of simple good breeding, that least accounted of feministes, to whose emancipation the war has brought a forced climax. She takes the present events as coolly and gravely as her brother, the militaire; it is only her eyes, glistening with confidence, that tell what it means to her to start away with her little sac to answer her number in the roll call, as infirmière to the wounded soldier, or his wife or child.

Her direct antithesis, the demi-mondaine, will it is said be the next in order to benefit by the war. Many of the less prosperous girls of this calling have already been obliged to take to legitimate work --- when they can get it. They usually begin at the top, seeking to enter the picturesque ranks of Croix Rouge --- strictly barred to them. They end in gratefully accepting a place in one of the ouvroirs (charitable working rooms for soldiers' clothes) where they are welcomed with the same consideration that is bestowed upon the most respectable. Those women who have so patiently dealt with the prostitution problem in Paris have a wise motive here for future influence. Perhaps the war will prove to be their long sought ally.

In spite of the order against street gatherings I witnessed one afternoon a scene of poignant significance, hundreds of my beloved midinettes, those coquettish little toilers, my chosen of all parisian types, in want of something better to do, parading the Boulevards carrying improvised patriotic banners, chanting La Marseillaise. This demonstration, quickly dispersed, had its compensations : it put on foot a movement to send a lot of these girls to the country where the farmers are calling for help in harvesting their crops.

A letter, a pathetic little newspaper letter, that might almost rank with the glorious epistle of Thérésia Tallien, has brought about the really promising thing, this is the « ouvroir, working room of the Croix Rouge, (referred to above), a thriving institution aged one week. Our « Old Maid, » as she signs herself, points out that like many another working woman she has no soldier hero in her family to glorify her and furnish her with the legitimate excuse of the daily stipend of one franc fifty, given to those who have, she is in the position of demanding alms although, in being deprived of her work by the war, she is as equally as any its victim.

This little letter taken in hand by Maurice Barrès and other prominent literary men, quickly brought about the co-operation of some substantial business people. Certain factories and ateliers have reopened with their girls working on all sorts of simple garments to be utilized by the Croix Rouge.

In his stirring paper on this subject, entitled « Let us Return to Our Furnishers », Barrès tells us that the saddest situation is really that of the non-combattant and more than that, of the one who has neither husband, son, or father in the army. If the patron will accept half cash on work the client should make it his duty to furnish that work to the patron for his hands, obviously it is the duty of the wealthy to put all the money possible into circulation. He cites the case of one big establishment in the Place Vendôme which is making a specialty of repairing fine laces, hoping in this way to keep its hands busy on half time.

Thus Maurice Barrès is destined to go down into history as the Patron Saint of the Coquette upon whose lily-white shoulders he places the sacred burden of upholding the artistic commerce of France,

Madame Marie Earle (who knew Kitchener as a young man when he was her uncle's aide-de-camp in India and not in the ranks at all) is devoting the proceeds of beauty product sales to the Croix Rouge. Think of the balm to her conscience of her who powders her little nose for sweet charity's sake, and in the meantime keeps up her habit of using the excellent product of the house! Hers is a happier lot than that of the tennis player who must give up her game for the grazing of sheep upon the courts of the Tennis Club.

The ingenuity by which every woman finds a means of serving according to her lights is shown in a little story that comes from a far away town on the Norman coast:

« I want to do something useful right away, » said an exiled Parisienne. She went to those nearest to her. She opened her house to the poor of the village. All the afternoon she had them served a dainty lunch. While she herself read a patriotic story and a poem to the wives of the brave soldiers, the children disported themselves riding donkeys upon the lawn.

The scene was a beautiful villa at Hennequeville and the hostess was Madame Réjane.

Surely we must all admit that we women are doing very well, even if it is not in the manner that we expected. Have we gained or lost, think you? At least we are submerged in goodness, the goodness of the Crusades.

MORATORIUM, moratorium, we seem destined to become familiar with this strange, long word, for the very necessary question that it designates is by no means being rushed. How are we soon to get our

GROS PAIN, we are saying! Even if our bakers were permitted to make another than that coarse grey sort, our white bread days would appear to be literally over. Our lesson in economy is, however, having its good results, one of them is the way that everybody is learning to walk. The old cocher so cockey with his soaring prices of mobilisation days, now counts by his taximètre, or breaks the martial laws of the

GOUVERNEUR MILITAIRE DU CAMP RETRANCHÉ DE PARIS. He is nevertheless driving up and down with an empty cab, wearing his most engaging, sunshiny-day smile to no avail, for people only smile back at him as they trudge bravely on. Nobody rides but those who have a

SAUF-CONDUIT and a

LAISSER-PASSER to show to the sentinels and gendarmes in order to prevent their auto from being

REQUISITIONÉE as they pass on their three hundred dollar route to Havre. That was actually the sum paid by two gilded, American youths to get to the seaport, who, when the sailing of « La France » was postponed, not only forfeited the Frs. 10. a day that the Compagnie Générale guaranteed for

MANGER but had to pay for their own food, as well as the Fr. 20. tickets that brought them back on the now regulation fourteen-hour train ride from Havre to Paris. In consequence, they are obliged to

FAIRE LA QUEUE at the police bureau for five or six hours a day in order to renew their

DECLARATION D'ETRANGER; meanwhile deciphering the

AFFICHES posted upon its walls by which the

CITOYEN is told the new laws: That he must extinguish his lights with the curfew and not attempt to enter cafés or restaurants after eight o'clock if be does not wish to make himself liable to the penalty of the

LOI DE HUIT HEURES; that the merchant selling him the necessities of life at a charge exceeding their market value will have his doors closed and his establishment

CONFISQUÉ; that those destroying so-called German property or making street demonstrations like the

NUISIBLES actions practised on the German houses on Saturday night will be liable to prison by the

LOI DE SIÈGE

While preparing the dejeuner on Sunday Marie, the bonne, came rushing in from the kitchen to fetch me to the back window ---an aeroplane! Little did we dream! Calmly we remarked its curious form and metallic complexion as it passed over the court. Not more than a minute after upon reaching the quai: bang, bang! Went its bombs on a poor, old woman. No need of that weighted message: « The Germans are at your door ».

When the Taubes got a habit of marking out our respected neighbour, the Bibliotheque Nationale, Marie succumbed to the free-train bait temptingly posted on every wall for her provincial eyes and started off with her handbag and her friends, the Cataldos, for her home in the hills of Savoie.

So now I study alone the imprinting of another page of history upon those old flag stones of the court, worn by the rollicking footsteps of the blades of 1830 as they went to and fro from their favorite Cercle. How interested the sporty Due d'Aumale and the rest of them would have been in the scene which took place there at five o'clock this morning: the preparations for a unique race in which the starters were a little baby and the God of War himself.

A few days ago a large, covered automobile was run into the cour and left standing over in a corner. (A garage is no place now-adays if an automobile is to be saved from requisition). Last night a young woman with a baby and a Bretonne nurse arrived at the apartment on the first floor. They were all covered with dust and had evidently journeyed from a threatened district.

That was what the automobile awaited!

Sure enough, at day-break I was wakened by a subdued bustling (automobiles are not allowed to circulate at night). First, two hamper trunks, the baggage in vogue, were lifted into the auto; while two or three women ran back and forth with packages and bags which were stowed into every corner of the fine, roomy vehicle, the baby, crowing and laughing, was brought out in the arms of its prettily coiffed nurse. Every body having managed to find a place, despite the baby and the packages, there came the usual consultation with the chauffeur over a big map and then away went the great growling auto and the little laughing bébé.

Stylish motors, half a dozen, with « American Ambulance » painted in white letters beside red greek Crosses all over their door and window panes, with silk flags of France, the United States and the Croix Rouge fluttering from their phares and side lamps, were tooting their way from the Champs Elysées into the broad rue François I and stopping at the door of number five, as I approached it yesterday; door second in importance to no door in Paris for it is there that our Ambassador remains.

Here is the story that the French are telling about the matter :

When the Government was starting for Bordeaux, Monsieur Delcassé, France's Minister of Foreign Affairs went for a final word with Mr. Herrick thinking that he, like the other foreign representatives, would be leaving the city. Mr. Herrick in the simple, fine manner that has endeared him to Americans in Paris in these days announced that he would stay to look after his country people and, incidentally, though he did not put it so, the French Capital.

Tears streamed down the cheeks of President Poincaré's Minister at this assertion, for the presence of the representative of the most important neutral country within its gates meant the safe-guard of the city.

Mrs. Herrick was in the entrance ball for the purpose of receiving the Ambulance Committee (threading its way through Jacques-Blanche groups in which Mr. Bliss and a number of new secretaries were talking), and happened to be alone when I went in yesterday, giving me the opportunity of asking an opinion (always « unofficially » ) about the matter of staying on in Paris. Her effort to disguise the pride in her answer was very touching:

« Mr. Herrick is going to stay, you know, although all of the other Ambassadors have left » ... and here the Censor requests that we draw the veil.

To her words I replied impulsively, « Mrs. Herrick, I suppose you know how proud we all are of you and Mr. Herrick. We've never had an Ambassador like him! »

A mischievous, warning glance answered from the kind brown eyes as they turned rapidly from me to two gentlemen who stood conversing within a few feet of us: Mr. Herrick, and Mr. Robert Bacon, our former Ambassador, evidently, just arrived

I had the honor of but a slight acquaintance with Mr. Bacon during his administration in Paris but it was enough to assure me that he would be the first to sympathise with my little narrative.

Before leaving the Embassy. I also spoke with Mr. Herrick. His attitude like that of his wife was so calm and, reassuring that, regardless of words, it clinched my decision to « hold on ».

The present feeling of apprehension has been greatly, increased by a pitiful sight: since the order was passed to evacuate certain outlying districts East of Paris, hundreds of poor vehicles of every description filled with old men, women and children, seated upon straw or mattresses, clasping in their arms the Lares and Penates of some humble home, have traversed from East to West the deserted, streets of our once gay city. Can this be Paris, we ask ourselves again and again? Did we ever think in scanning the illustrated magazines showing the Turkish exodus of a year ago that their tragic pictures could be repeated in Paris to-day?

I have seen as many as eight people, as well as household effects, packed into a two wheeled cart, in revolutionary days called a « tombereau » , drawn by a single worn out horse, too useless to be requisitioned. I have seen half a dozen of these horses fall in the streets beneath their burdens while the poor creatures in the wagon would start off in every direction to seek a substitute for the faithful beast. It is almost impossible to believe that the victims of one such accident, in the Boulevard Haussmann, actually made a ghostly attempt at a feeble pleasantry. No tears! Perhaps they were beyond tears.

Ah, the indignity of it! When one thinks of these honest people chased from their homes for the follies of a mad egoist! The sight of it makes the blood boil.

A few nights since on going to put in my mail I found the streets adjacent to the Gare du Nord swarming with the usual element of to-day's crowd : old men, women, and children, this time augmented by quite a number of religieuses in their picturesque habits. One did not need to be told that these were the expected Belgian refugees, the first convoy. The more fortunate among them had pillow cases stuffed with necessities ; although they were of all classes of society such a thing as a conventionally packed hand bag was not to be discovered.

Most of the refugees had flown from their homes with the clothes they had upon their backs, many of the women had not even taken the time to put on a hat, their hair was ruffled and their hands and faces were grimy with the long, hot journey; the lights of the city seemed to absolutely daze them, they blinked their tired eyes as if awakened in their sleep.

The disheveled veil of a little religieuse impressed me more than anything else; I thought of the consternation that would have reigned if one of the nuns had appeared in the halls of the Visitation Convent, which my sister Eugenia and I attended as little girls, with her veil pushed off in that way, exposing all one side of her hair! Napoleon with his « little hat » awry could not have shocked me more.

Sœur Geneviève, as they called her, told me that she had seen two of her sister nuns killed before her eyes. Her energy for her country people grouped about her was truly supernatural. Of course, I did what I could to help her. Had it not been for the renewal of some of these acquaintances at the Cirque de Paris the day after the whole thing must have seemed some terrible dream.

Imagine the Place de l'Opera with a broiling, midday sun beating down upon its circle of gray-white asphalt, unbroken by a single human figure and five or six people scattered about the big, corner salle of the Café de la Paix gazing out upon it as they go through the motions of déjeuner; presently, the gradual apparition of a lumbering shadow, perceptible through the lace stores, causes those seated nearest to the door to bolt through it, everybody else following suit.

They surround a jaded horse and rider, a mounted English soldier, evidently a scout. His khaki uniform is covered with dust, and he seems barely able to keep his seat upon his absolutely exhausted animal. My first thought that the young fellow must be intoxicated, is quickly dispelled upon coming into the sound of his voice.

« They won't get here! They wont' get here! he was repeating dully, mechanically, Yes, it is true that they are at Chantilly , he replied to a question from the crowd, « They're only about fifteen miles out, but they won't get here, the Germans won't get to Paris. »

« You've seen them? » some one else asked him in English.

« Seen them? Curse them! » This with a slight divergence from the monotone of the soldier's voice « Seen them! I'll tell you what I have seen. Up there in the North this is what I have seen them do myself: cut off the tongues of wounded officers, and tell them to give orders. I have seen, them cut off the soldiers toes and tell them to march. I have seen them cut off the hands of little babies: so that they could not be soldiers, was their diabolical excuse. They cut off the women's breasts : so that they cannot nourish soldiers, they say. These are the things we've all seen in the North. »

The young fellow's eyes were fixed as if they still gazed upon the massacre.

« We are American newspaper correspondants, --- said Mr. Bertelli, the Heart representative, ---may we quote you? »

Quote me wherever you can, if it is of any use to right and decency. My name is Benham and he showed it to us printed beside his number in his cap.

« Won't you come in, and have a bite with us? » asked Mr. Bertelli.

« I will if I can get so far after I feed and stable my horse. »

« There's the proof that he is an honest fellow », said one of the bystanders He thinks of his horse first. »

Stables are remote from the Café de la Paix, I suppose he dropped down into some nearer hostel to the one which he found for his horse. We saw him no more.

Paris, September 5, 1914.

Benham, the English Cavalryman, seems to have left a contagion in the dark Boulevards: hearing ones own voice from afar. Has that phenomena a scientific definition? No matter. Each of us doubtless remembers the start with which it was revealed to us---at some gosling dinner party ---the jerking ourselves into the discovery of an untouched plate and an empty bubble beyond it; a few minutes of hard listening to the over-interesting person at our left, who had betrayed us, and it had passed.

If the cure had only been that simple tonight! Everybody spoke with anybody in somebody else's voice, each one realized it as well as the other but nobody would swallow the remedy: to get away by himself. The gregariousness that had made newspaper bulletins an excuse for going out found it just as valid in the matter of not going in.

Having scanned the short, non-committal report posted by various dailies people lingered about the gloomy streets as long as policemen would allow, hoping against hope that a more satisfactory communication would appear, meanwhile exchanging tuyaux (tips) that had been pouring in to-day from every quarter. These brought the Germans as far as Meaux, a favorite trolley ride in picnic times.

If this is true, the conclusion was that « they » will certainly arrive at the fortifications of Paris by Monday at the latest, some only gave them until to-morrow, in spite of the change of Cabinet Ministers and the passing of our command into the strong hands of General Galliéni, the new Military Governor of Paris.

The announcement of his appointment has, nevertheless, acted a stimulus, even at this hour. There were those in the streets to-night who staked their all upon his valor, maintaining that he was capable of holding the city for another ten days before it could be surrounded, meaning besieged! What we have been going through is merely a state of siege.

And then what? It is the general opinion that he will not capitulate until the last moment.

It that case, will the Germans shell the city?

No. All agreed upon this, those who expect them tomorrow and those who cling bravely to the opinion that things are much exaggerated.

« They wont get here », is stilt the cry of the optimists.

« Nothing but a miracle can stop them now », answer the pessimists.

As I passed the loge, my concierge came out to say that she is deriving satisfaction from the thought that the embassies are going to put up notices on the apartments of all aliens; with that and our American flag she asks nothing more, and she confided to me that her faith in our national emblem is shared by no other than Madame Taupin, the crêmière half way down the block, noted in the quarter for her anti-optimistic tendencies.

A story of American stability, overheard in the Boulevard, added to her contentment, as it had to mine. The speaker asserted that in going from the Concorde to the Etoile yesterday midday he had passed but a single human being, the American Consul General, tooling sturdily along on his bicycle.

I found her---the concierge---and her husband writing post-cards by the lamp light to their soldier relations; doubtless at this minute there is many a one besides myself who prefers the « making of notes » to the thought of going to bed. In fact I feel rather envious of my confrères away up in the top of the lighted, newspaper buildings, their enforced trimming of the mid-night dip must be a consolation notwithstanding their complaints about its futility, owing to the way the Censor trims their telegrams. After all it's enough to make the English-born among them pessimistic when they remember the Kaiser's order that they shall meet the fate of spies if he gets to Paris.

I can't help admiring the tenacious Scot in Mr. McAlpin.

It costs no more to be optimistic and its lots more comfortable is his device.

Slogan of the Allied Optimists:

« Are we down hearted?

« Non, ils ne viendront pas! »

Something tells me that theirs is also the persuasion of my friend the Lady of the Rivers, as she was called by her sculptor, Visconti; down there in the Square Louvois her shadowy figure leans calmly, comfortingly against the fountain as she gazes confidently at the occasional officer's auto, whizzing down the rue de Richelieu like a gray phantom; they no more perturb her than does the ominous heaviness of the air they break, no more than did the Commune's cries or to-night's communiqué.

Paris, September 7, 1914.

Paris in the spring time is, I know, the song of most of you, but have you ever lingered through its murky summer till my favorite hours, those of early Autumn; till a faint, gold mist stretches above the yellow trees that stir in the soft air, at the same time warm and fresh, the Autumn air of France? It was just at the beginning of that season when first 1 saw the Boulevards, the Champs-Elysées, the Luxembourg...

After the terrible strain of the past week, the nearer, nearer approach of danger, we awoke yesterday morning to such a day; it is really no play of the imagination that with the first glimpse of light I felt, as many people have since told me they also did, that something had happened in the moral atmosphere as well as the air about us. And behold, a tale had filtered in over night, a tale almost too good to be true!

Other such wonderful Autumn Sundays we have gone aracing, at Longchamps or Auteuil; yesterday afternoon we joined a hatless Tout-Paris in a voyage to the fortifications. With hearts less full of presentiment we climbed to the top of the soft green circle that forms the setting of this jewel of a city, to look across the equally green, well-drained moat at the barricades and entrenchments made of stones and branches piled up in the roads leading away from the gates.

One recalled all too vividly the same picture described by Francisque Sarcey in his Siège de Paris. It seems a great pity that the Germans should destroy these beautiful efforts of nature, the trees of the out lying Boulevards, every time that they come to maturity. So far they have not been able to rob us of the Bois de Boulogne as they did in Soixante-dix. Of this latter sacrifice Sarcey said:

« Who could. have told me that in the midst of so much misery one of the most cruel blows that I should receive would be the destruction of the Bois de Boulogne, that park which I, man of work, do not penetrate four times a year, that wood to which I believed myself to be as indifferent as to all the rest of the gifts in which I have no time to participate. »

Not a branch nor a twig was missing that might add to the velvety blackness, which we peered into last night across the iron-bound barrier of the Porte Dauphine, closely guarded lest some truant stripling should be lured out into the Champs-Elysées, where an occasional, tempting ray from the phare on the Automobile Club, faithfully circling above, warned a wandering taxi-cab off of the deserted side-walk.

Paris, September 13, 1914.

It was pleasant to push one's way through those ten, twenty, thirty, thousand faithful human creatures, crowded into Notre-Dame to-day and the, streets all around it, after so many solitary hours in deserted scenes.

Cardinal Amette was already in the midst of his discourse when I managed to reach a place in the main nave somewhere near the pulpit. His exhortation was only semi-religious : he spoke of patriotism and the various manners great and small by which every one might share in it, in a tone devoid of all formality.

And when through the open portals the voices floated in from the Parvis blending with those of the interior, in a plaintive hymn of hope, « Sauvez, Sauvez la France, au nom du Sacré Cœur!  » it was as if the children of one family pleaded for the preservation of their fireside.

Ah, where but in France, even in the old world, could we see the like of that improvised pageant which made the rounds of Our Lady's cathedral : a hundred children of Mary mysteriously draped in veils of soft, white muslin, entirely covering their faces and bodies, carried the banners of the Blessed Virgin which led the processions; following came a marvelous collection of relics, of the body or personal effects of the Patron Saints of Paris, enclosed in jewelled chasses of gold and silver, borne upon the shoulders of soldiers who had come in from the battle field of the Aisne to perform the sacred duty, their uniforms were travel-stained and worn with the campaign while not a few of them had bandages upon their wounded hands or arms. They passed with bowed heads beneath their precious burdens, relics of : Sainte Geneviève, Saint Louis, Saint Rémy, Sainte Clotilde, Saint Denis, and last of all, a statue of Jeanne d'Arc, for there are no existing relics of the martyred maid of Orleans.

Then, to the number of one thousand, came the priests of the city who are past recruiting age (that many again have answered their country's mobilization summons) they were clad in their sombre black cassocks, some of them singing beautifully as they went along.

Finally came the Cardinal, the long train of his state robes carried by four acolytes, he moved slowly down the aisles blessing the people and the various religious articles they held before him. He stopped just beside me to place his hand in affectionate gesture upon the curly, blond head of a tiny boy; almost before realizing it I had unpinned from my coat a little American flag and was holding it out for a blessing. Immediately upon its being granted, the flicker of a smile passed over the Cardinal's face and as I bent to kiss his ring he uttered a scarcely audible « Merci »! The most solemn occasion holds something personal for every one in these autumn days of 1914.

Ah yes 1 Like my much beloved countryman, the late Dr. John Evans, known to the Church as the marquis d'Oyley, most of us, Americans in Paris, really intend to go home « some day ». How the Doctor used to make us laugh about it at those charming Sunday evenings, never without their brilliant figure of the Catholic hierarchy.

Ten years before the time of which I speak--- so runs the story--- the Doctor had gone over to America with his wife and two sons, « to America, the proper place to educate American boys and the proper place for American parents to die ».

They travelled the States over and at last decided that California was their goal, the garden spot of the world, the Doctor would assure you. Then leaving the boys in Georgetown College the parents came back to Paris to « pack up ».

For two years, neither husband nor wife mentioned to the other the calling in of the emballeur, the man who makes packing a veritable dream in Paris. That subject, was only then broached by an indiscreet friend, who was promptly told...

The boys were eventually brought back across the Atlantic by their tutors.

And here, the handsome old Doctor (who was as much a part of Paris as the statue of Henri IV on Pont-Neuf which he so strikingly resembled and of which he never tired of hearing) would look across the table to his wife, bowed before her time by the terrible tragedy of their younger son, and he would say with a courageous little laugh: « Well, we'll all go home some day, Nannie! »

The Doctor went home first.

All of which is not such flagrant digression as it may perhaps appear for I had often seen several of the Abbés and Chanoines of to-day's procession seated at the Evans' hospitable board. And long, long before that, I used to love to listen as a little girl to my mother's stories of her childhood's neighbours, Dr. John Evans and his wife and of their subsequent establishing, in Paris as the favorites of the historic Dr. Evans who saved the beautiful Empress Eugénie from the Communistes of Belleville in 1870. I knew it all by heart as well as the Empress's coldly beautiful features in Chatter-Box, which formed a pendant piece for the poor young Prince Imperial being stabbed by Zulus.

As I threaded my way along with the devotional crowd leaving the church, (no Communists this time) over the Pont Neuf before the statue of Henri IV, the Doctor's favorite portrait of himself, how it all came back to me: that kindling of my love of everything French and my secret pride in our intimate connection with French History!

« Monsieur Dorbon, I am désolée, the future of bur little book is grievously assailed --- I have missed my chance to see the battle field! It was like this : the day before yesterday, I lunched with Mr. Frederic Villiers and Mr. Gordon-Smith, the great war artist and correspondent and the upshot was their offering to take me out to the battle field. You can see what an advantage it would have been to have made the trip with two such celebrities, but I .....

« Is that all? --- said our publisher and kind friend --- Is that all? I should call it a case of letting the rubies lay to pick up diamonds. Attendez, you have heard me talk of little Riri Molliard, the ward of my copain Roblin, the député of La Nièvre? Go to see Riri and let him tell you how he saved his village which stood between the fires of Esternay and Montceaux-les-Provins, on the culminating point of the German march on Paris. When you have heard his story, you'll forget that you ever saw your esteemed war correspondents ».

« That's just it, Monsieur Dorbon, I can't forget them for I can't get around without them ---they know the truc. Do you want me to be arrested as a spy? »

« Never fear, our friend the député will fix all that ».

Sunday morning, the usual just-reinstated omnibus train, crammed to its capacity, for it is the only one in the twenty-four hours, creeping away from the Gare de l'Est at daybreak, along a track guarded every few yards by sturdy, red-legged territoriaux who curse their age and their job; the usual unlimited stops at stations often marked only by a soldier sentinel; the usual criss-cross backing in and out of slidings like the endless new game called « Trenches », manoeuvring with long box trains from whose open doorways ruddy English and French soldiers seem to be tumbling with joy, cheering and singing as they go up the line, often within touching distance of trains moving the opposite way from which no one is visible but the Red Cross officer darting about in the shadows among his convoy of wounded; and other trains again, closely, mysteriously barred, which give forth no visible sign of life --prison trains ; the usual descent far from the desired destination, this time at St. Siméon; the usual nerve-testing trip in a jolting cart behind a jogging, non-requisitionable nag, brings us at last to Beton-Bazoches, in the department of Seine-et-Marne, rising courageously between devastated, neighbouring hamlets, to a low house at the entrance of its main-street road, to the home of four year old Riri Molliard, the town's unconscious, laughing preserver. There he stands on the broad door-step, clapping his hands as a sign of welcome, beneath the faithful eye of mother Forestier whose merry, darting glance outdistances her stiffened gait and aged, heavy body.

Perhaps it was the melody of simple time that played from those four friendly eyes to the almost inaudible accompaniment of the cannon's distant rumble, perhaps it was the general harmony of the delicate French landscape which owed to them the peaceful beauty resounding all about us, something united those two widely differing figures: the dancing, black-headed baby, and the helpless, white-beaded, old woman standing there in welcome readiness to take a stranger to their hearts and fireside, to share so simply with her the tale that will unite them for ever in the history of their town.

There are in France today, no doubt, hundreds of other Riris, of other Mères Forestier, for whom our friends are but our chosen symbol, but I am wondering if any of the rest would fit quite so perfectly into the story as Riri of Beton-Bazoches and his dear, old foster-mother.

We shall begin at the very beginning of this, our special romance of the battle-field, with the birth four years ago of a little boy, with the death during the same night of his young mother and the suicide of his young father beside the child's crib. Monsieur Roblin, a député of the Nièvre, adopted the little fellow and put him out with a nourrice, according to French custom.

As little Henri grew, he became more and more mischievous, more and more bright and happy; nature seemed to proclaim in his very smile her victory over those who would thwart her ways, causing the dignified name of Henri soon to be lost sight of in its diminutive, Riri, which might be translated, « laugh laugh ».

About Easter-time, 1914, Riri celebrated his fourth birth-day and by the same token became a citizen of Beton-Bazoches, whither he was transplanted from the nourrice to the care of a substantial fairy-godmother in the form of Madame Forestier, who had begged to have in her keeping this child of the only child that she had ever raised, Riri's mother, also an orphan at an early age.

So, the broad door-sill of the Forestier cottage, after twenty-five years of tranquility, again became a playroom. His trottoir, pavement, as Riri christened it, was his reception room as well, where all who passed in the road-way were considered as his personal guests: Mother Dubrut, trotting by with her cans of milk as if she were eighteen instead of eighty-four ; Mademoiselle Blanche with her dimpled cheeks and laughing blue eyes, that never could be mistaken for having seen any but their eighteen summers ; Père Balan, the carter, another vaillant octogenarian ; the gendarmes of Courtacon and Monsieur Pierre, the Launcelot of Beton, up and down the road they came, knight and lady, lord and dame; all through the spring and summer weather Riri received them as he now received me, as he also received the Prussian Captain and his five thousands soldiers.

What a strangely lasting impression, by no means unpleasant, the visit of the Prussians made upon the little boy. Beau village, beau pays (Fine village, fine country) his welcoming words to me were, it seems, the first that were spoken in Beton by the Prussian Captain.

Oh, but we are anticipating! In the early days of September, the good people of Beton, like all others East of Paris began to think seriously about the reported march on the Marne. Would the Germans get there? Could Beton be another Charleroi? Was it better to stay and attempt the protection on one's property, or to flee the oncoming danger?

Mère Forestier was of the optimistic (you have only to glance at her reassuring countenance to know it). Riri upon the door step listened open-eyed to the exchange of her convictions with passersby, the unique occupation of those days, and he naturally concluded that Prussians were not so bad as they were painted. Prussians of the countryside are, by the way, the Boches of the boulevards.

On September the third, the citizens of Beton remarked a strange rumbling sound, a distant storm? Nearer, nearer it came --- the cannon! Then, notwithstanding Mère Forestier's optimism, the exodus began in earnest. [Monsieur Roblin was very ill at that date.]

And, in fact; she concluded herself that it was best to get the child away. With her next-door neighbour, Madame Masson, she arranged to share one of the conveyances that were to be the salvation of those who could not walk away. (Oh, that steady, westward gait of the refugees, will we ever forget it?) But Madame Masson's old mother suddenly became ill with fright, too ill to sit up in the carriage.

Take her first, and come back for me, » unselfishly said Madame Forestier.

« Feed the rabbits and the chickens at mid-day,» said the other, handing her the house keys, « I will get back as soon as I can ».

Riri and Madame Forestier, waved the neighbour goodbye from the trottoir. They were alone in the village street.

An hour after the cannons boom, boom, was mingled with a new whizzing sound ending with an alarming crash, Madame Forestier and Riri went down into the neighbour's cellar. Her own house has none.

Even if the neighbour returned to get them it would now be impossible to go; but she never did return, her poor old mother died on the route.

Another hour, voices, strange voices and then:

Rat, a, tap, tap! Rat, a, tap, tap!

« Ça y est » (There they are) said Madame Forestier; they, the Prussians were evidently at the door of her own house, the next beyond, and the first at the entrance of the village.

« Allons,  »(Come along), said Riri, anxious for any excuse that would get them out of the cellar.

« To go up is perhaps the best of a bad bargain, » concluded the old lady, « they will only break in the door if we don't and besides they will think we're afraid. »

Then came an awful moment:

« Shall I take the child with me? Yes. Come Riri, » and hand in hand they slowly went up the cellar steps and around through the back way of the houses.

But you must hear it as nearly as possible in their own words, as I did, beside the cosy autumn fire, in the low, tile-floored kitchen, from which the front door leads upon the high road:

« I held my head stiff, though my legs were shaking, and I opened the door sort of quick like. Five of them stood there. I tried to look at them, as if 1 did not care, I gripped the boy's hand. 'Que voulez-vous Messieurs' (What do you wish, gentlemen? --- I suppose we shall have to leave out the French, but it is hard not to give her exact intonation).

« 'Champagne, eggs, bread', said their leader.

« 'I have no champagne, nor eggs, they are both very scarce, but I can give you bread and meat', I answered. There are those of my neighbours who now criticize me for this, but I was thinking how best to save the boy.

« Beau village, beau pays », the child here cut in upon her recital.

« Yes, that was the first word they said to him 'Beau village, beau pays' said the leader, taking hold of his little hand. Mon Dieu! The child held up his other hand, and looked that Prussian in the eye, as if he really knew the meaning of it all. 'You are not going to cut off my hands, are you, Monsieur?' he said.

« The leader, he who was the officer, looked away, I think he could not answer.

« ' You are not going to cut off my hands?' persisted the child.

« Then, striking himself on the breast, the leader said; ‘We are not all beasts! I myself have a little boy not as large as he.’

« 'Come in Messieurs,' I said.

« They sat in these very chairs, while I got the food.: The leader wished to hold Riri on his lap, but Riri does not like that . (Riri shakes his head sagely.) « They ate all I gave them, they asked for soap, and Eau de Cologne! The leader shaved himself there,, before the little glass in the corner; after that, he took from his pocket a leather case and showed us the pictures of his one year old baby. 'I am not an animal,' he said again, he always pounded on his breast when he referred to himself" I have children that perhaps I shall never see again.' »

Here comes the more broadly interesting part of this conversation, remember it was the fifth of September:

« 'Why do you think that you will never see your children again? ' I asked him.

« 'In two days we reach Paris, we expect a great battle, ' he replied.

« 'Do you think you will take Paris?'

« 'That depends if Paris wishes, Paris is well fortified. We have many soldiers to pass. For myself, I only think that perhaps we will get there, if there are those in Paris who wish it. You French people were very wrong to make us this war. We Germans are peaceful, home-loving people, we do not want war. You should have remembered though that we are a stronger, a more robust people, we live out of doors, but you French are a people who like too much the amusements of your cities, you will suffer the most from this war'.

« 'Monsieur, is it possible that you believe that is was we who declared the war? ' He saw that my surprise at his statement was only too genuine.

« ‘Yes, he said, the French have long sought an excuse for war '.

« 'Wait a minute before you say that again' I answered, and I got him the newspapers containing the declaration of war by Germany. You should have seen his face! He read them all, laboriously, but I saw that he read every word. It must have been a half hour before he put them down.

« He only did so when a noise in the next house attracted him, he hurried out, but it was too late, his men had broken open the doors, and most of the furniture in the house of Madame Senicourt behind us ; he looked very angry, he ran out and spoke to them sharply in German; the men slunk down the road. Then he asked me if I had a piece of chalk and he wrote on the door (there were the blurred fragments of it still on the open door before me) he said : 'When more soldiers come, show them that, But I pray you do not wait here, take the boy and go,' he pointed to the cross-road leading over there by the cemetery, ,they may do harm, those who follow me, I can promise nothing for them.'

« I had noticed soldiers passing up and down while he was sitting down, some spoke with Riri who was on the door step, some looked in and saluted the officer.

« He offered to pay me, but I refused. 'Take my advice and get out of the village,' he repeated, as he moved away.

« Scarcely had he gone, when the obus began to be heard again; as I called Riri in, I saw Prussians lying in the cemetery road --- the road you see to the right, there, from the window. Were they dead or only gris? The latter I think. Not a bottle of champagne was left in that Masson cellar! No wine of any sort! How did they get off with it? Down the back road, while the officier was shaving evidently. Oh the malins! They liked the good things of France!

« Again, through the cellar door apertures we watched, as the rest of that division passed, five thousands of them, we have since heard. And then my years got the best of me, what else happened I don't know. The child alone knows what passed in Beton that night. I must have lost consciousness from the shock of it, for I only came to Sunday at mid-day, the sun was just above us when I opened my eyes. Riri was peeping out of the door panes, clapping his hands, shouting ' Prussiens, Prussiens!’

« I looked out, sure enough, they were hurrying past, but in the opposite direction, up the slope in detached groups instead of down it in companies, as they had come. Their heads were bent forward, they did not even glance at the door », (her voice vibrated with emotion, I could almost see them passing down the road) « What did it mean, what did it all mean?

« Riri begged to go out, but I did not like the looks of them, I left him this time, and went up alone.

« Then I saw frightful things. From all around, smoke was rising in the air, it came from the direction of the station of Beton, from Courtacon, from Montceaux! I could not take the child away right now, but I would get a good grip on my old self and in the night, God willing, we would start --- somewhere. »

« Almost while I was thinking this, the noise quieted down. I went back to the child in the Masson's cellar, he was playing away with the rabbits. We were eating when Riri jumped up, he heard them first: voices! French voices! I could not believe my ears or my eyes: four, five, six, eight, of our own little pioupious!

« We jerked open the cellar door, we ran out to them. 'What does it all mean?' we asked them.

« They replied with another question, had we seen any Boches come this way?

«  ‘Not for an hour,' said I.

« ' Which direction, ' said they.

« I pointed. They laughed, oh, how they laughed!

« 'That's the road to Berlin,' they said, 'we've turned them back! Did you hear our seventy-five give it to them at Montceaux? They've taken the road back to Berlin! Paris is safe! Paris is safe! »

Then the pioupious wanted to know bow this thing had happened: when Courtacon and all the villages had been set fire to, a remote building, a stable near the Gare, was the only mark of their passage in Beton. Madame Forestier showed them the writing on the door:

She also told them about the officer's warning of getting away before the arrival of another detachment. « That sounds funny », said one of her compatriots, and while she prepared them a famous goûter of Madame Masson's rabbits (a secret which you, Gentle Reader, must help us keep from the ears of their owner) the pioupious went out with Riri to investigate.

They found that that peaceful village, without a man who could carry a gun within sight of it, had been wantonly strung all over with inflammable cords by the soldiers of the Prussian officer whose warning had evidently meant that those who followed him would apply the torch, as his own men had done to the Gendarmerie of Courtacon, to the beautiful old farm of the Château at Montceaux and the XVth Century church beside it.

« See our church, it is still standing », proclaimed Riri here, proudly pointing to the spire.

« As if he alone were responsible for its preservation » I suggested.

« Well said Madame Forestier, he no doubt thinks so; for that is what the village people say. I can tell you, Riri is the hero of the market place on Monday mornings. Had it not been that the officer was taken with the child, who knows but that he might not have allowed his men to put the spark to those cords? I saw the cords myself. Riri, what did you help our soldiers to do? »

« To carry away the cords and to eat up the rabbits », was the prompt reply with the accent on the latter phrase.

« And now your own dinner, Madame, » suggested my hostess (it had been bubbling a comfortable accompaniment to her nice French voice). To-morrow you will go to Montceaux where they began the battle of the Marne, at the gates of Paris, as they say, and to Esternay and Sezanne. To Courtacon you can easily walk, you see that bare space just beyond the church there, that is where Courtacon stood; I walked there myself a few days ago, I asked a poor fellow to keep you a pair of obus; my cousin writes me that they stand them up for vases in Paris, I hope you will give him something for them, he dug them from the ruins of his home, and they are his only fortune. »

Oh---

Riri had stood by scarcely speaking a word during her whole recital, his brown eyes wisely moving from one to another of us; his feet were planted far apart and his hands, disappearing under the blue apron of the French boy, were thrust into the pockets of his sailor trousers just like those of any American boy; now he smiled a rare smile.

As she painfully arose from her chair, Madame Forestier stroked his head. « It was that smile that did it, said she --- it's the smile of his little mother before him. »

WILL YOU SEND ME BEST COLLECTION POSSIBLE MOST DESIRABLE WAY MEELEY

Think of standing with such a passport in your hand at the entrance of the rue de la Paix on opening morning in normal times, for after all the real fun of a new dress lies in the choosing, what matter if another wears it.

Alas, like most good things, need I tell you, fellow human, that telegram of Miss Meeley's had a 'but'--- its latter phrase. With the times as upside down as a Chinese memorial, her white card on a blue cable blank was anything but what it sounds: it meant studying the psychology of trunkites from the inside rather than observations, and only the other day an English friend had tickled me by saying: «  You're the first American that I've met, since the war broke out who hasn't a trunk on her hands. Trunk mania I call it. »

So you see the unproclaimed diplomat who composed that telegram was aware of what she was about; entre nous I thought of its unwritten compliment long before her own so handsomely unspecified needs. Its wording reminded me of my father's story about the magnificence of Czar Alexandre II, the time that he sat before a map with a pencil in his hand and said to Mr. Walter Winans, dashing a line straight from Petrograd to Moscou : « Build your railroad like that ; we'll talk of it when it's finished. »

If you wish to know why you've heard nothing of the German prisoners at Asnieres, or the thrilling arrival of General French at the Gare du Nord, or the funny Taube attending crowds in the open places, just ask the admirable and patient officers of No. 36 avenue de l'Opera, once the tranquil Consulate of the United States of America, since the war the happy hunting ground of trunkites, not only American but English--- the English consul having lately found the climate of Bordeaux more to his taste than that of Paris.

Ask, also, those brave men and women in the rue de la Paix who responded to the presentation of my telegram with a grandeur rivaling its own. Said the Dean of them:

« We will complete our models to supply your needs, if you are the only one who asks it; armies may march and, battle by the Marne but we have our battle, no less prosaic, for the future of the commerce that they've left behind, for the present of their dear ones who depend upon us. When your country's demands have been fulfilled --- no French women will seek us this year --- our hands will be given some sort of work for the endless needs, of the Red Cross Society.. »

What a wonderful organization it is---the Red Cross I mean. Will all the bombs of this awful war suffice to burst open its paradox for us?

Up in those five storied beehives, that line the little golden paved --- not to say gold bricked --- street, whose output by the sweat of the brow and of thousands of little needle-pricked fingers, is the life bread of hundreds of families away off in the quarters of La Chapelle, Menilmontant and La Villette; up in those great ateliers, from eight until eight, long rows of graceful young bodies, swathed in big aprons to protect their simple coquetteries, bend and sway above narrow, canvas-topped tables, strewn with cobwebs, of lace and cloth of gold, like so many delicate, human machines, while their minds march by the Marne. Look at their little white faces! With what a list of paradoxes they might furnish us!

And the mighty arbiters of the mode, while they held back great carved doors to let me peep in on these little Penelopes, weaving away; while with their own hands, without benefit of saleswomen or mannequins, they afterward showed me the sum of their precious wares spoke as real arbiters are apt to do ---note the Czar Alexander II. So sympathetically, so appreciatively did they speak, that in one or two cases I ventured to remark that some of their arrogant, absent salespeople would have profited by a lesson in their methods.

Upon the flowing lines to flap around slim ankles, that they exposed for my selection, I shall not here enlarge, another of my name will have demonstrated them to you much better than I may do long before these words may reach you.

But I saw something else of which I will tell you, something, that made me feel a far greater patriot than the brassard-decorated individual who passed me by with a glance of commiseration (I have no brassard) as I went through side entrances to mount into those closed, deserted, electric lighted salons, something that I venture to say no compatriot of mine has ever seen, something that I think our good friends, the great geniuses of the artistic commerce of France, make a big mistake in keeping so religiously hidden away from us Americans : I saw Gratitude in the rue de la Paix.