ent itself on any one section of the city, but had scattered itself in
different wards. The freaks of the shells were as inexplicable as those
of a great fire that destroys everything in a house except a piano and a
mantelpiece with its bric-a-brac, or a flood that carries away a log
cabin and leaves a rose bush unharmed and blooming.

Silent pedestrians walked along and searched the ground for souvenirs,
of which there were aplenty. Sentries guarded houses and streets where
it was dangerous to explore, and park benches were used as barriers to
the public. All the cabs were requisitioned to take away luggage and
frightened inhabitants. During the shelling hundreds of women and
children, breakfastless, their hair hanging, hatless, and even
penniless, except for their mere railway fares, had rushed to the
station and taken tickets to the first safe town they could think of.
There was no panic, these hatless, penniless women all asserted, when
they arrived in York and Leeds. A wealthy woman whom I slightly know
nearly rushed into my arms, her face very flushed, and told me that she
had left the servants to pack her china and vases, and was now on her
way to find a workman to dig a hole in the garden to receive them; as
for herself, she would eat from kitchen dishes henceforth.

A friend of mine hurried into Scarborough by motor to rescue her sister,
who was a pupil at one of the boarding schools. But it appeared that
when the windows of the school began to crash the teachers hurried from
prayers, ordered the pupils to gather hats and coats and sweet chocolate
that happened to be on hand as a substitute for breakfast, and made them
run for a mile and a half, with shells exploding about them, through the
streets to the nearest out-of-Scarborough railway station. My friend,
after unbelievable difficulties, finally found her sister in a private
house of a village near by, the girl in tears and pleading not to be
sent to London; she had been told that her family's house was probably
destroyed, as it was actually on the seacoast.

On the other hand, instances of self-possession were not lacking.
Another school hardby took all its children to the cellars, where the
teachers made light of the matter, and the frightened father of one very
nervous child was pleasantly amazed to find his child much calmer than
himself--and quite delighted with the experience. In St. Martin's
Church, the Archdeacon was celebrating communion. Shells s