ges send him a
Lafayette kit. In the clearing-house in Paris I have seen on file 20,000
letters from French soldiers asking for this kit. Some of them were
addressed to the Marquis de Lafayette, but the clothes will get to the
front sooner if you forward two dollars to the Lafayette Kit Fund, Hotel
Vanderbilt, New York. If you want to help the Belgian refugees, address
Mrs. Herman Harjes, Hotel de Crillon, Paris; if the Serbian refugees,
address Monsieur Vesnitch, the Serbian minister to France.

If among these bargains you cannot find one to suit you, you should
consult your doctor. Tell him there is something wrong with your heart.

CHAPTER XII

LONDON, A YEAR LATER

February, 1916.

A year ago you could leave the Continent and enter England by showing a
passport and a steamer ticket. To-day it is as hard to leave Paris, and
no one ever _wants_ to leave Paris, as to get out of jail; as difficult
to invade England as for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. To
leave Paris for London you must obtain the permission of the police,
the English consul-general, and the American consul-general. That gets
you only to Havre. The Paris train arrives at Havre at nine o'clock
at night, and while the would-be passengers for the Channel boat to
Southampton are waiting to be examined, they are kept on the wharf in
a goods-shed. An English sergeant hands each of them a ticket with a
number, and when the number is called the passenger enters a room on
the shed where French and English officials put him, or her, through a
third degree. The examination is more or less severe, and sometimes the
passenger is searched.

There is nothing on the wharf to eat or drink, and except trunks nothing
on which to sit. If you prefer to be haughty and stand, there is no law
against that. Should you leave the shed for a stroll, you would gain
nothing, for, as it is war-time, at nine o'clock every restaurant and
cafe in Havre closes, and the town is so dark you would probably stroll
into the harbor.

So, like emigrants on our own Ellis Island, English and French army and
navy officers, despatch bearers, American ambulance drivers, Red Cross
nurses, and all the other picturesque travellers of these interesting
times, shiver, yawn, and swear from nine o'clock until midnight. To make
it harder, the big steamer that is to carry you across the Channel is
drawn up to the wharf not forty feet wa