outh is
being mowed down--'Out there' where lies our every hope, 'Out there'
where we would like to be, all of us! 'Tis hardly the moment to paint
ripe grapes and ruddy apples, and to feel that you're only good for
that! It's stupid to be old!"

And many, many a dear old man has passed away, unnoticed. When one
asks the cause of a death friends shrug their shoulders,

"We scarcely know, some say one thing, some another--perhaps the war!"

"In proportion you'll find that there are as many deaths on the
Boulevard as in the trenches," said our friend, Pierre Stevens, on
returning from Degas' funeral.

I would you might go with me, all you who love France, into one of
those Parisian houses, where after dinner when the cloth has been
removed, the huge road maps are spread out on the dining-room table,
and every one eagerly bends over them with bated breath, while the
latest _communique_ is read. Fathers, mothers, grandmothers, and
little children, friends and relatives, solemnly, anxiously await the
name of their _secteurs_--the _secteurs_ where _their_ loved ones are
engaged. How all the letters are read, re-read and handed about, each
one seeking a hidden sense, the meaning of an allusion; how dark grows
every brow when the news is not so good--what radiant expanse at the
word victory.

And through fourteen hundred long days this same scene has been
repeated, and no one has ever quailed.

The theatres have cellars prepared to receive their audiences in case
of bombardment, and one of our neighbours, Monsieur Walter, has just
written asking permission in my absence to build an armoured dug-out in
the hallway of my home.

"It is precisely the organisation of this dugout that prompts my
writing to you, _chere Madame_.

"So much bronchitis and so many other ills have been contracted in
cellars, that I hesitate to take my children down there; but on the
other hand, I dare not leave them upstairs, where they would be
altogether too exposed. It is thus that I conceived the idea of asking
your permission to transform into a sort of 'Dug-out dormitory'--(if I
may be permitted the expression) the little passage way, which in your
house separates the dining-room from the green room. To have something
absolutely safe, it would be necessary to give the ceiling extra
support, then set steel plates in the floor of the little linen room
just above and sandbag all the windows.

"Naturally, I have done nothing pending you