to be rid of her, they returned two of her horses. She rented a
cart and employed girls suddenly thrown out of work, to take the place
of the vanished men. The business limped on but it never ceased for a
moment; and as the months passed it assumed a firmer gait. People
returned from the country, finding that they could be more useful in
Paris as members of one or other of a thousand oeuvres; and they were
of the class that must have clean linen if the skies fall. Also, many
Americans who had fled ignominiously to England returned and plunged
into work. And Americans, with their characteristic extravagance in
lingerie, are held in high esteem by _les blanchisseuses_.

Further assaults upon the amiable Government resulted in the return of
more horses and one or two trucks. To-day, while the business by no
means swaggers, this woman, thanks to her indomitable courage and
energy, combined with the economical habit and the financial genius of
the French, has ridden safely over the rocks into as snug a little
harbor as may be found in any country at war.

III

THE MUNITION MAKERS

I

Aside from the industrial class the women who suffered most at the
outbreak of the war were those that worked in the shops. Paris is a
city of little shops. The average American tourist knows them not, for
her hectic experiences in the old days were confined to the Galeries
Lafayette, the Louvre, the Bon Marche, and the Trois Quartiers. But
during the greater part of 1915 street after street exhibited the
dreary picture of shuttered windows, where once every sort of
delicate, solid, ingenious, costly, or catch-penny ware was displayed.
Some of these were closed because the owner had no wife, many because
the factories that supplied them were closed, or the workmen no longer
could be paid. To-day one sees few of these wide iron shutters except
at night, but the immediate consequence of the sudden change of the
nation's life was that thousands of girls and women were thrown out of
work: clerks, cashiers, dressmakers' assistants, artificial flower
makers, florists, confectioners, workers in the fancy shops, makers of
fine lingerie, extra servants and waitresses in the unfashionable but
numerous restaurants. And then there were the women of the opera
chorus, and those connected with the theater; and not only the
actresses' and the actors' families, but the wives of scene shifters
sent off to the trenches, and of all the other humble folk e