our
way out of the emptying theatre into a rainy street. The impression of
unreality in the face of visual evidence persisted into the night when,
after an afternoon at anchor, we glided up the river, our decks and
ports ablaze across the land. Silhouettes of tall poplars loomed against
the blackness; occasionally a lamp revealed the milky blue facade of a
house. This was France! War-torn France--at last vividly brought home
to us when a glare appeared on the sky, growing brighter and brighter
until, at a turn of the river, abruptly we came abreast of vomiting
furnaces, thousands of electric lights strung like beads over the crest
of a hill, and, below these, dim rows of houses, all of a sameness,
stretching along monotonous streets. A munitions town in the night.

One could have tossed a biscuit on the stone wharfs where the workmen,
crouching over their tasks, straightened up at sight of us and
cheered. And one cried out hoarsely, "Vous venez nous sauver, vous
Americains"--"You come to save us"--an exclamation I was to hear again
in the days that followed.

III

All day long, as the 'rapide' hurried us through the smiling wine
country and past the well-remembered chateaux of the Loire, we wondered
how we should find Paris--beautiful Paris, saved from violation as by a
miracle! Our first discovery, after we had pushed our way out of the
dim station into the obscurity of the street, was that of the absence of
taxicabs. The horse-drawn buses ranged along the curb were reserved
for the foresighted and privileged few. Men and women were rushing
desperately about in search of conveyances, and in the midst of this
confusion, undismayed, debonnair, I spied a rugged, slouch-hatted figure
standing under a lamp--the unmistakable American soldier.

"Aren't there any cabs in Paris?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, they tell me they're here," he said. "I've given a man a
dollar to chase one."

Evidently one of our millionaire privates who have aroused such burnings
in the heart of the French poilu, with his five sous a day! We left him
there, and staggered across the Seine with our bags. A French officer
approached us. "You come from America," he said. "Let me help you."
There was just enough light in the streets to prevent us from getting
utterly lost, and we recognized the dark mass of the Tuileries as we
crossed the gardens. The hotel we sought was still there, and its menu,
save for the war-bread and the tiny portion of sugar, a