low, he kissed her hand, and then went away without a word.

The head waiter, who knows all the gossip of the house and of half the
town besides, told us about her. Her only son, a lieutenant of
artillery, was killed at the taking of Liege. It was three days before
she learned of his death, though she was here in Aachen, only a few
miles away; for so slowly as this does even bad news travel in war times
when it pertains to the individual.

Another week elapsed before her husband, who is a lieutenant-colonel,
could secure leave of absence and return from the French border to seek
for his son's body; and there was still another week of searching before
they found it. It was at the bottom of a trench, under the bodies of a
score or more of his men; and it was in such a state that the mother had
not been permitted to look on her dead boy's face.

Such things as this must be common enough hereabouts, but one hears very
little of them and sees even less. Aix-la-Chapelle has suffered most
heavily. The Aix regiment was shot to pieces in the first day's
fighting at Liege. Nearly half its members were killed or wounded; but
astonishingly few women in mourning are to be seen on the street, and
none of the men wear those crape arm bands that are so common in Europe
ordinarily; nor, except about the railroad station, are very many
wounded to be seen.

There are any number of wounded privates in the local hospitals; but
there must be a rule against their appearance in public places, for it
is only occasionally that I meet one abroad. Slightly wounded officers
are more plentiful. I judge from this that no such restriction applies
to them as applies to the common soldiers. This hotel is full of them--
young officers mostly, with their heads tied up or their arms in black
silk slings, or limping about on canes or crutches.

Until a few days ago the columns of the back pages of the Aix and
Cologne papers were black-edged with cards inserted by relatives in
memory of officers who had fallen--"For King and Fatherland!" the cards
always said. I counted thirteen of these death notices in one issue of
a Cologne paper. Now they have almost disappeared. I imagine that,
because of the depressing effect of such a mass of these publications on
the public mind, the families of killed officers have been asked to
refrain from reciting their losses in print. Yet there are not wanting
signs that the grim total piles up by the hour and