g to them; the women who were to stay behind.

As though the Judgment Trumpet had sounded, France was changed in the
twinkling of an eye. And added to that subconscious terror that lurked
in every American soul of another revolution--a terror that was
dispelled after the third day when France reached out her long arm and
mobilized her people into a strong component whole with but one heart,
was an inexplainable dread of this terrible calm.

We knew about trained armies going to war, but here was a situation
where the Biblical description of the Last Day was carried out, the man
at the wheel dropped his work and was taken; he who was at the plowshare
left his furrow....

First we were afraid we would not have enough to eat. A famine was
prophesied, and the credulous who know nothing of the vast sources which
supply France with food clamored to get to England. Then there were
frenzied stories of hotels closing and prices soaring. None of which
happened or had any chance of happening. Food was never better, and
today we have fruit that melts in the mouth; fish that swims in the
sauce, the lack of which Talleyrand deplored in England; little green
string beans that no other country produces or knows how to cook.

Prices never rose for the fraction of a sou. If one had a credit at a
hotel, all was well, but unless one had ready money in small notes, none
of the restaurants would accept an order. Here, and here only, was a
snag concerning food. It is true that women went for twenty-four hours
without food, but the reason was the lack of small change, not of
eatables.

After the panic caused by a thousand rumors annexed to a dozen
disheartening and revolutionary conditions, after the people felt that
the Commune was the figment of imagination, not inspired prophecy; that
money was getting easier; that, above all, America was looking after its
own, though her move toward that end seemed to take months instead of
days, and because we counted by heart-beats, not calendars; after all
this, we found time and interest to observe the phenomena around us. We
began to feel ashamed of our petty madness on the worldly subject of
money and ships and safe passage home; our passionate, twentieth
century, overindulged selves who were neither fighting nor giving our
beloveds in battle, and who were harassing those who were in a death
struggle. Never throughout the centuries to come, whether the map of
Europe is changed or not, should the