nown, but everyone was
jolly and pleasant, and we had a charming time.

The Count told us of the old proud Georgians when there was a famine in
the country and a Russian Governor came to offer relief to the starving
inhabitants. Their great men went out to receive him, and said
courteously, "We have not been here, Gracious One, one hundred or two
hundred years, but much more than a thousand years, and during that time
we have not had a visit from the Russian Government. We are pleased to
see you, and the honour you have done us is sufficient in itself--for
the rest we think we will not require anything at your hands."

On Monday I motored with the others out to the ferry; then I had to
leave them, as they were going to ride forty miles, and that was thought
too much for me. Age has _no_ compensations, and it is not much use
fighting it. One only ends by being "a wonderful old woman of eighty":
reminiscent, perhaps a little obstinate, and in the world to
come--always eighty?

Came back to Batoum with Count Stanislas Constant, and went for a drive
with him to see the tea-gardens.

* * * * *

[Page Heading: TIFLIS]

Christmas Eve at Tiflis, and here we are with cars still stuck in the
ice thirty miles from Archangel, and ourselves just holding on and
trying not to worry. But what a waste of time! Also, fighting is going
on now in Persia, and we might be a lot of use. We came back from Batoum
in the hottest and slowest train I have ever been in. Still, Georgia
delighted me, and I am glad to have seen it. They have a curious custom
there (the result of generations of fighting). Instead of saying
"Good-morning," they say "Victory"; and the answer is, "May the victory
be yours." The language is Georgian, of course; and then there is
Tartar, and Polish, and Russian, and I can't help thinking that the
Tower of Babel was the poorest joke that was ever played on mankind.
Nothing stops work so completely.

What will Christmas Day be like at home? I think of all the village
churches, with the holly and evergreens, and in almost every one the
little new brass plates to the memory of beautiful youth, dead and
mangled, and left in the mud to await another trumpet than that which
called it from the trenches. There is nothing like a boy, and all the
life of England and the prayers of mothers have centred round them.
One's older friends died first, and now the boys are falling, and from
every little