If they are able to raise any money for me I will see that it is wisely spent. There is great need everywhere, and I am proud of the people of St. John, they have done so much.
There is a poor woman who lives in a little village near here. She had two sons—one has been killed in the war, the other a helpless cripple for eighteen years and is not able to move out of his chair. He makes baskets sometimes, but now there is no one to buy the baskets. The mother goes out by the day but can earn so little. I gave him five francs, one of the De Monts dressing gowns and some warm underclothes. He was so grateful, poor boy, and says he will not feel the cold now. His mother is away nearly all day and he sits by the window all alone and depends upon the neighbours coming in to help him from time to time; he is always cheerful and never complains.
The W——s have such a hard time—they get so little of their income since the war began. It has gradually gone down from $3,000.00 per year to $500.00; four of them to live on that amount. So many people are in just the same condition, there is no end to the misery.
I do not know whether it is the French or the English army we are to follow at my new post.
Paris, September 23, 1915.
I am off to-morrow at 7.30 a. m., to Boulogne, then Calais and reach Dunkirk at 9.30 p.m.
I have had two very strenuous days and will be glad to rest in the train to-morrow. It took such a time to get my papers in order. The thermometer for the last two days has been about 100.
Mobile No. 1, France, 1915.
I am really not in France but Belgium. I cannot tell you just where, but it is within ten miles of the firing line, and not far from the place where so many of our boys from home have been sent. I thought when I came here that it would be entirely English, as the lady who gave the hospital is an American married to an Englishman. The English are not far away but they are taken to their own hospitals.
We belong to a little wedge of the French that is in between the English and Belgians. It is a regular field hospital and is composed of a great many portable huts or sheds; some are fitted up as wards, another the operating room, another the pharmacy, another supply room, laundry, nurses’ quarters, doctors’ quarters, etc. It is a little colony set down in the fields and the streets are wooden sidewalks.