was
Sunday--or rather a year of Sundays all rolled into one. Overnight
the city had been transformed into a tomb. Shops were closed; iron
shutters were pulled down everywhere; trolley cars stood in the street
as they had been left. My own footsteps resounded fearfully on the
pavement, and I walked five blocks before I saw a human being.

I stopped at the American Consul's office on the Place de Meir, only
to find the place was locked. A frightened face behind the grating told
me that the consul had taken his wife to the country--good place to
be in, I thought.

Things began to seem lonely. I heard shells falling and saw flames in
the southern quarter of the city, and decided to go in that direction to
look up an American correspondent and two photographers who had
asked me to bunk with them in the cellar of a little abandoned house
at 74 Rue de Peage.

Turning down a little side street leading toward the Boulevard de
Leopold, I was greeted by a clap of thunder overhead. A shell
demolished a house across the street and about thirty yards down.
The concussion knocked over a couple of babies. I picked them up,
put them back in the doorway of the house where they seemed to belong,
saying over and over again mechanically, "There, there, don't cry.
There is nothing to be frightened about"; and then, just to show how
little I myself was frightened I began to run. I ran for all I was
worth. I ran right into the fire. The shells were falling fairly thick
on the Boulevard de Leopold; every two or three hundred yards a house
was partially destroyed; bricks and glass littered the pavement, and
occasionally, every quarter of a mile or so, I saw a figure skulking
along under the eaves of a building, crouching and ducking in time to
the nasty music of the shells. But I decided that the middle of the
street was the safest part.

When I had gone about a quarter of a mile I got my nerve again. I put
my hands in my pockets, lighted a cigarette, and was just saying to
myself, "This is pretty good fun, after all," when CRASH!! CRASH!! two,
or possibly three, shells, bursting in rapid succession, tore down
houses a hundred yards ahead of me. Then one struck in the street, and
jagged fragments of angry shrapnel skidded along the pavement like a
thrown stone skipping along the surface of the water. I was again
trembling all over.

Was the game worth the candle, I asked myself. "I've come three
thousand miles and overcome