shame, and when we saw a group of people waiting for us on the terrace of the chateau as we turned into the long, straight avenue, I could have jumped out to lose myself for ever. Not so my husband who coaxed Trilby into a lumbering gallop, and when we drew up at the steps of the chateau he threw the reins to a waiting groom and asked the company how they liked his thoroughbred. At once we were in a friendly atmosphere. Of course they were amused, but also very sympathetic and indignant with the Lion d'Or for breaking their promise. I I can laugh now, but I was nearly thirty years younger then, and I can feel 1 very sorry for the strange American being inexorably taken up to that group of strangers. I can still see our hostess putting up her lorgnon and then her gesture of surprise. But if my experience can help anyone else it is worth having passed a bad quarter of an hour so as to be able to say with authority that nice French people are entirely independent of and superior to the non-essentials of this life.

My second article of faith, that children were generally put out to nurse and received only frivolous attention in France also perished soon after our arrival here. In fact the whole family life turns round the child. No sooner do a young couple settle themselves than the question of the future children arises. They must be provided for; they must begin life as comfortably as did their parents; the dots must be saved by economy. This accounts to my mind for the apparent meanness of the middle and lower classes. I say apparent, for I do not think it is real. I recall the gifts of fruit, game and vegetables we have received from peasant neighbours —the eager, tender service in times of illness the gracious hospitality offer

ed and the many glasses of wine we have drunk in gay little gardens, the owners of which begged us to sit down for a while when we were walking by. But a franc, even ten sous, never. That does not belong to the parents; the actual money must be treasured against the day when the kids. . . . the gosses, as they call them, will need it all to begin their journey in this "bank-note world."

In all sorts of homes the presence of the child is inevitable, and I used to be made very impatient when an amusing story told at the table would be interrupted because Loulou was eating too much pudding, or Didi's appetite was not up to the mark. I regretted the absence of the nursery on my own account. And by the way, to us who were brought up to think the nursery one of the nicest rooms in the house, the very name awakening visions of bright fires, heaps of toys, and a general happy-go-lucky shabbiness dear to the child's heart, an allusion I read in a Spanish novel may be amusing. A woman not too exemplary, was being described, and one of the things brought up against her was that she followed the coldblooded English fashion of having a room set aside for her children, that dreary place called by indifferent Anglo-Saxon parents "nursery." So, in my inability to read the French heart at that time, I decided that we would give a small dinner, and show our friends what a few clever people gathered round our table could produce of wit and interest. With the help of a dictionary, a grammar, the cook's advice, and a word of counsel from the fishmonger, I composed three invitations to dinner, asking three couples, two of them without children. As I mentioned only "your husband" in the third invitation I felt quite safe

matters, and as it was not for them to hear secrets that did not concern them, they had left. When I read eighteenth century memoirs I am always finding allusions to this same sort of friendship between the employed and employers, and I often wonder if the rage against the rich that found such ghastly expression in the French Revolution was not in a certain measure the fault of the middle-men, the profiteers of that day. Not long ago I read the letters of the Marquise de Montegut, whose brother-in-law was our friend La Fayette. Her attitude towards the peasants on her husband's testate was that of a friend until the poison had begun to work, and there. are many accounts of nursing the sick, laying out the dead, bringing babies into the world, and dancing at weddings among the village folk. Her mother, the Duchess d'Ayen, her grandmother the Duchesse de Noailles, and her sister the Vicomtesse de Noailles, were all guillotined at the same time. I have seen the Imitation of Christ that Mme. d'Ayen read during the last night she had to pass on this earth, and her tears have left brown stains on one of the pages. She wrote a short sentence of faith and courage for her other children, which she put between the leaves, and then helped her daughter support her old mother to the tumbril, all three calm and resigned. One of their friends was a priest, and he had managed to let them know that he would be near them when they mounted the scaffold; their eyes sought him in the crowd of jeering, hostile faces, where he was disguised as a workman; at the supreme moment he lifted his hand and the victims knew that he had given them absolution.

The other great passion in the Frenchman's heart is his country. It

is not our love of country, it is of quite another quality. We love the heaven against which our Stars and Stripes float, be it east or west, north or south. The Frenchman loves his soil, and the soil of his own field best of all. How many of the people we know at home live in the houses where their fathers lived, let alone their grandfathers? Not many; but in this land it is otherwise. I had not realised the clinging love whose roots go far down into the past that exists in the peasant's heart until I had come in contact with the inhabitants of the devasted regions. Not long after the Armistice I was talking with the Mayor of the ruined town of Bouchoir in the Somme, to which the Secours Franco-Americain, of which I am president, had been assigned. As we walked through the inexpressible mass of fallen houses an idea came to me; I asked the Mayor why he could not at once collect all the bricks and slates that were intact, estimate the quantity, and begin the construction of a few houses with the remains of many. He looked dazed as I explained my plan, so dazed that I thought he did not understand me. But it was I who could not then understand him; he finally said in his slow, laboured way that I have since learned is his usual fashion of speaking: "That is impossible; no one could in that way get his own bricks." bricks." I was impatient and said of course not, but no one could expect that! He looked at me again with that confused expression, and then broke out: "Is any man in this village going to give up the right to the bricks his ancestors built with? No, never!" It was the same thing when we first tried to organise agricultural co-operatives in that department; they did not want their corn mixed with that of their neighbor; they wanted the

very grains that had grown in their own fields. When I think of the attachment to the old ways I am amazed at the wonderful results these men have accomplished in their own fashion, and feel the truth of what my husband often says: "The French are the most radical in their speech, and the most conservative in their actions of any race."

Since those days many have been obliged to follow my suggestion, as it was found the best way to work; not that the idea came from me, as the Administration had already adopted it before it came into my mind. I am lost in surprise at the results obtained by the peasants; they form some sixty-five per cent of the population, and we all know that it was through them that France paid her debt in '70. There is no eight-hour day for them; they plod along year in, year out, doing the same things their fathers did; the women work as well as the men, in some places even more. For instance, in the island off the coast of Vendee where we live when we are not in Paris, it is interesting to watch the course of the seasons. The people live for most part in the town, their fields lying a few kilometeres from their homes, and they generally ride to their working place on their donkey. The women wear very full skirts, which they make into a sort of knickerbocker, pulling up the middle of the back breadth and fastening it on their belt in front; they then sit astride their donkey, and jog over the road to their potato patch, or their field of corn, knitting as they go; the men trudge alongside, and when they arrive the donkey is hobbled and set free for all day. I used to pity the poor little fellows with their feet tied in more or less until I wore, a few years ago, those impossibly narrow skirts

and found how soon one got used to it. The peasants then fall to work, but never with any great show of energy; they dig, and plant, and harvest; at noon they sit under a tree or hedge and eat their frugal fare, a big piece of bread with cheese or butter on it; in hard times it is rubbed with a raw onion only; they drink some thin red wine; then the men roll cigarettes and go to sleep, while the women take their knitting and gossip. In due time work begins again and goes on until the sun, their clock, tells them it is time to go home; the procession is reformed, and back they go to the little gray town. It is a life of discipline and frugality; it makes us see how it was that the poilu, coming from such stock, ate less and bore more hardship than any other soldier. This frugality mingled with simple pleasures has always struck us when we come in contact with the working classes of France. I remember a road-mender in Touraine who became one of our friends, although in the beginning I used to think of his namesake in The Tale of Two Cities, and feel horribly afraid of him if I met him in the dusk. He had about a mile of road to keep in order, and at this job he worked for eleven months of the year, receiving 600 francs therefor; his month of vacation which gave him another 100, he used to ask for at harvest time when he could find employment on the farms of that country. He had a little walled garden perhaps a hundred yards square; a low stone house, two walnut trees, a vegetable patch, a tiny vineyard, and some fruit trees. His wife and two children were always neatly dressed; they took care of the hens and chickens, and the vegetables, but he tended the vines after his day's work. The nuts made oil for their salad; the

shells lighted their fires; they made wine for their wants; there were enough eggs for them, and at the end of the month the only bill of any importance was for bread. Four people fed and clothed and lodged for barely 150 dollars a year, out of which they laid aside 200 francs, and enjoying life! But they would never have told us of their affairs if we had not become real friends, for no one is more reticent than your Frenchman.

The blow that fell on them in '70 made many of the passing generation bitter, and the habit of underrating themselves grew on them. It is undoubtedly a virtue not to let your right hand know what your left hand doeth, but at times it is carried too far, and I must own to a feeling of exasperation when I find out by accident of noble, generous deeds done by my friends of which they have never = spoken.

It is often said "Why have French women done so little for their own country? We hear they have let the Americans work, and have done nothing themselves."

we

Let me simply recount what one family with whom I am very intimate has done to my knowledge. The family in question consists of father, mother, a daughter and three sons; they are well-to-do, but what should call land-poor, having very large and important estates, and not I quite the income necessary to keep them up. Their social standing is of the best. The two oldest sons were at the front, the youngest being only seven in 1914 was exempt. The daughter at once entered a Red Cross hospital, afterwards having permission to serve in a hospital organised by her parents on their estate in the south. They cared for gravely wounded soldiers there until all small hospitals

had to be suppressed by order of the Government; they then came to Paris, and the daughter entered the Val de Grace where she did fine work until she had a case of blood poisoning which nearly cost her her right arm, and left her so run down that she could not return to work. The father took charge of a radium ward in an annex of the Val de Grace and has seriously injured his health by his steady devotion to his patients. The mother took his place as Mayor of the village where they live in the south, leaving her little boy there, and passed half her time with him, attending to the duties of a mayor, and half her time in Paris to be near her husband and daughter, and also to see her boys from time to time; the oldest was wounded three times, but not seriously. She had a great many god-sons, and also sent provision every week to a German prison, where a nephew was a prisoner. I often went to the train to see her off when she left Paris for the South; the train started at nine, and she would sit up all night in a second-class compartment, filled to overflowing, as all the trains were at that time. At first I used to beg her to take a sleeper and only by chance learned that all the money she saved in this way went to the prisoners. She used to get a corner if possible, and when I would pity her for the fatigue of such a night she would show her knitting and her rosary, and say she had plenty to occupy Occupy her. Her brother was an officer, and his wife organized and entirely supported a large hospital, which from its importance was kept on to the end of the