It is nine o'clock or later when the dressings begin, and sister does them as a rule, the senior pro doing them if she is not on hand. I rush ahead to undo the bandages, and put rubber sheets under the men, having the patient all ready when sister comes along. She is waited on by the other pro, I being despatched hither and yon to fetch pails, splints, special bandages, empty bowls, sterilize tubes, and so on. My duty is also to rebandage the patient after his dressing is done and to make him neat and comfortable in bed again. The doctor comes in later to do the more important dressings and to look over the cases. He requires every one's attention. A doctor, it appears, can utilize the combined efforts of any number of people at one and the same time. Some of the dressings take four people, one to hold the limb, another to hold a pan under it, a third to do the dressing, and a fourth to hand the instruments to him. We have one trained nurse and from two to four V. A. D.'s in a ward.

The dressings are finished at eleven o'clock, or later if there is a great rush, and then comes the cleaning up, which is entirely the pro's affair, and of which the sister does nothing. There are innumerable pans and bowls to be washed, medicines to be put away, and rubber sheets to be scrubbed, thirty sometimes on busy days. Also the instruments and tubes must be reboiled and cleaned. In the midst of this mêlée the men's lunches arrive, and we all stop our work to serve them. I am the little Hebe, for I pour out the pinard (wine), of which they are allowed a cupful at each meal. That over, and the medicines given, the plates are piled up and sent to the kitchen to be washed, and the clearing up of the morning's débris continues. Sister makes out the permission-cards for the men who are allowed to go out, and they are sent to the

Our own lunch comes at twelve, with second lunch at 12:45, as a ward must never in any circumstances be left alone, and turns are taken at eating. We are off duty either from 1:30 to 4:30, or from 4:30 on, on alternate days. The pro who is on between 1:30 and 4:30 has her work planned for her: Monday, blanket bathe all patients, and give out clean linen; Tuesday, scrub all dinner-boards and dressing-pails; Wednesday, scrub the paint in the ward kitchen; and so on throughout the week. Besides these tasks, which take up the greater part of the afternoon, every day there are all the temperatures to take and beds to make; all patients must be given basins of water with which to wash (all our hot water must be brought in pitchers from the ground floor); and all their backs must be rubbed with alcohol and powder, and egg-nog be made for the men who need feeding up. The nurses' cup of tea, which comes at four o'clock, is well earned and welcome.

The pro who comes on duty at 4:30 has usually not very much to do unless there are evening dressings, hot compresses, an "intake," or a visit from the doctor; but any of these calamities may happen at any time. She serves the men's dinners at six, and sees that all is well for the night-no Carrel tubes flooding the beds and nothing out of place. She then writes the dayreport before going to dinner at eight. o'clock, when the night nurse appears.

This schedule varies, of course; sometimes there is less to do, then, again, there is more. In a real rush there is no offduty time, and every one is on a dead tear from early morning until late at night. Operations vary the routine, also, and the junior pro takes up the cases as she can best be spared from the ward work. She sees that the man is properly clothed and covered, remains with him during the operation, and stays with him as he comes out of the ether. The other day one of our men asked me quaintly what he had said in his anesthetic dreams; but I could n't tell him, as he had talked in Breton the

whole time. Also a convoy, or "intake," breaks the monotony, and is always followed by several hectic days, or more if they are serious cases.

We V. A. D.'s are absolutely responsible for the cleanliness and good appearance of the wards, and there is much rivalry on that account and much comparing of wards and methods. C, unfortunately, outshines ours at the moment, A ranking second. But we will get them yet.

You can see what healthy physical lives we lead; and, indeed, it is not lacking in interest. The men are dears, and these English girls are thorough bricks. It is really amazing how they have adapted themselves to this life when one considers their way of living before the war. Also they seem more robust than our girls.

When they first arrive, most of the men appear much older than they are; and it is a real joy to see how they improve after a week or two. Their faces fill out, and their eyes brighten, until one fine day you discover that it is a boy of twenty-one you 've been nursing instead of a man of thirtyfive. We have many patients of forty or more, among them a dear old thing whom we call Grandpère Douze (twelve). He had been hit by an aëroplane bomb, and was a total wreck when he came. Madame Douze was sent for immediately. He had a huge slice off his thigh, an enormous raw area that had to have skin grafted on it from the other thigh. A tiny piece was missing from the end of his nose; his left arm was shattered; his right thumb and forefinger were gone; he also had a badly cut forehead. grand père! It was a long, hard pull. He thought his last hour had come, and so did we. The older men lose heart more

Poor

quickly than the younger ones. It takes youth to fight battles.

Madame Douze sat by his bedside and prayed, and tried to look cheerful when he was awake; but it was hard work.

Now, after two wonderful operations, he is slowly mending, and it is a joy to see him, fat and rosy, although his hearing is nearly destroyed by the explosion. He looked at least sixty two weeks ago; now

he would pass for fifty-two or thereabout; and with another two weeks of good food and care he will no longer be a proper grand père at all. A case of retroactive existence, eh?

June 15.

A hospital is a strange unit of existence when all is said and done. It is like being on shipboard. There is the same detachment from the things of ordinary life, the same isolation from the world at large. When you first arrive, you look around at your fellow-passengers or crew and wonder how in the world this or that person chanced to be aboard; for what reason had he ventured afar and was voyaging thus in strange seas. Everything here goes by bells at fixed hours. Any small event, such as the arrival of a visitor or the ringing of the telephone, is greeted with as much excitement as the event of a school of porpoises or a whale at sea. The chief interests in life are the three meals a day and your neighbor's business, together with a certain amount of speculation as to "who she was" and "where he came from." The arrival of wounded is nothing more or less than a shipload of passengers at a new port, who are looked over by the crew and older passengers with a view to picking out the interesting ones. If one jumped overboard, the hospital would perhaps be sorry, but would sail serenely on to other ports and strange travels. Hospital concerts and ship's concerts have much in common, and no skipper ever braved the deep with more seadoggish nonchalance than that with which our old médecin-chef guides the hôpital anglais. One's life is settled, fixed, foreordained, in the same way; no use struggling or straining to do something different or to do it otherwise. It is the routine, and that settles it. To change might lead to disaster. It's a soothing way to live. After all, thinking is a bother and a bore and unnecessary if one can be happy and useful without it.

Yesterday we touched at a foreign port and explored it, Marjorie Darrow and I. We went to C- I had a day off, and

Marjorie went without sleeping, as she is on night duty. It is a long train ride, including several changes and waits at small junctions, lunching on the way. Mr. and Van Deeter met us at the station, for we went at their invitation. First we "did" the cathedral, a lacy Gothic exterior, with row upon row of carved saints and gargoyles beneath its two imposing towers. The dignified façade is a mass of strange, fantastic little forms. The interior is like the inside of a jewel-casket, and the stained-glass, dating from the twelfth century, is the finest in France since the destruction of Rheims, a party-colored glory of flaming blues and golds and scarlets, tiny bits of glass through which the sunlight filters, breaking up the spectrum into its separate rays, and lighting up the dim and brown interior like a Persian rug aflame. They are poetry made in light instead of sound; history transparent, quaint medallions, alive with astonishing archaic saints and angels, stiff little dukes and duchesses in widespread skirts, with comically solemn expressions. Mr. A- acted as guide, and tried to photograph the dusky interior, after which we proceeded to inspect the palace of Jacques Cœur.

Jacques was the treasurer for Charles VII and a great voyager in his day, as the monkeys, palms, and ships carved on the mantelpieces of his house testify. On the ceiling of the chapel were Mme. Cœur and the two daughters, masquerading as chubby and somewhat Teutonic-looking angels in filmy garments. Below them,

on a frieze, is his brave device with the words, "A vaillan riens impossible" ("To valiant hearts nothing is impossible"). Poor man! He died penniless, and exiled in disgrace by his ungrateful royal master, whom he had served discreetly and valiantly.

Louis XI we discovered, brooding and sinister, in a courtyard near by, a wicked, glowering man in bronze, hatching dark plots. We promenaded through the clean, wide streets of this charming town, and then went to the hotel for dinner, not so bad as it might have been. Being as much

in a rut as we are, and even more girl-less than we are man-less, it was as great an occasion for the aviators as for ourselves and a distinct party for all concerned. So we were exceedingly merry.

The sunlight had not yet disappeared from the western sky when we wended our way to the station to take the only possible train home. In a sky of daffodil gold an aëroplane from A- soared above us, a bomb-dropping plane with beautiful, slightly curved wings.

Upon arriving at the chalet we found the garden gate chained; but Marjorie, being the thinnest female on earth, finally squeezed through, and opened it for me.

June 21.

Live and learn! I've just had a lesson in scrubbing as a fine art. Whoever would have thought that cleaning windows required deep and careful study!

Being told to polish the ward windows, I at first blithely obeyed. But those windows got smuttier and smuttier; and the more I cleaned, the smearier they became, until after an hour and half of hard work they were an opaque mess. As I leaned back, regarding them despairingly, ready to weep, who should happen along but Lady Frances herself.

"Let me show you how," she said gaily. "I know just how you feel about these windows. I've been there myself."

And with that she briskly seized a rag, gave a few artful twists and some persuasive rubs, until the pane glistened splendidly. So you see I am shining socially. God save the pun!

Great excitement on Sunday as the first and long-expected Americans appeared. They were two officers of the engineer corps, looking over the ground. I could have cheered when I saw their khaki uniforms; and if the hospital had been a ship, it would have capsized as, regardless of wards, wounded and dressings, every one rushed to the west side and hung out of the windows when it was noised about that they were there inspecting our "desert." The médecin-chef invited me down, and it was nice to see them!

An unholy feminine longing for millinery has seized upon me, and I nearly fell for the seductions of an adorable black velvet bonnet, with a pink ribbon on it, like an eighteenth-century portrait. But on my way home with the duchess a priest saluted us in the street, and turning to me, madame said, smiling:

"That was for you, my dear, because you are a Red Cross nurse."

So I am sticking to the moral vanity of my chaste blue veil, and forgoing the other.

What a storm center Paris is, to be sure! There are rumors of battles past, present, and to come; of attacks, counterattacks, of horrors and inventions as yet unknown; of peace by autumn on the one hand, of war for another ten years on the other; of treachery, treason, and intrigue; of strange things brewing in the East, of the collapse of Germany; of the collapse of France; of the coming of the Americans; of their failure to come. But tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and we shall see what we shall see.

Paris, July 5. The Fourth of July was typical, sunny and hot, but a bit sultry even in the early morning. By 9:30 I was on the curb of the rue de Rivoli, near the rue Castiglione, with C, waiting for the troops to pass, which they did shortly after.

First of all, an aëroplane hovered over us like a giant moth, just over our heads, and nearly low enough to scrape off the chimney-pots of the neighboring houses. It raged about, looping, turning, and screaming like a distracted bat beating against the light; gloriously daring, beautifully graceful, appallingly alive. Amid the incessant scream of its motor marched two stolid French regiments, two famous old battle-torn, faded, magnificent bodies of men, little men with dry, yellowish faces, and blue overcoats rain-beaten into streaks of greenish gray and brown. They trudged rather than marched, "the mute, inglorious legions." For what can the acclaim of multitudes mean to these hosts that battled at the Somme and held Ver

-ième

dun! The second to pass was the Infanterie, decorated with the Medaille Militaire, the green-and-yellow cord of which hung from every shoulder.

The crowd, lining the streets for miles, burst into a shout of applause; but some people cried, and there was a lump in my throat, too, as they passed on, like the tramp of Destiny.

There was a brief pause, while the aëroplane continued its howling career over our heads; then with a yell that reached to heaven the whole populace surged forward, broke the restraining ropes that held them, swamped the gendarmes, and C and I, swept along with the tide, found ourselves marching side by side with the first American troops in France!

People cried and they laughed, then they choked and did both together. Women and tiny children struggled to give a flower to some sunburned Yankee from across the world; but one and all they marched along with them.

The soldiers smiled under their broad sombreros; but I, laughing with my lips, remembered the French troops that had just passed, and my heart cried. There were tears in C's eyes, too; and indeed it must have been so with all Americans. Yet who could wish it otherwise?

We marched along for several blocks before we could finally gain the sidewalk again, and even then it was hard to push against the tide and regain the hotel. Upon thinking it over afterward, it was quaint to recognize Indian faces among our troops, and I realized with a start how few people among the hundreds of thousands who that day greeted them knew that they were the red men, or singled them out, without war-paint and feathers, from among the straight, proud, highnosed men who passed before them.

Upon our return, there was Mr. W waiting at the hotel. He had just arrived in Paris, en route from Pau to the front, and right glad was I to see him. By that time it was hot and humid, and we were very tired. A little later we lunched together at an adorable teaplace, small and quiet, but quaintly fu