I find that Paris is much more alive and happy than I had expected, although the individual cases are so very hard.
I have decided on my pension, and I like Mme. H——. My room certainly is comfort itself, for Paris, with lovely sunlight and trees and a park below. I move in November 4th, and I am glad to have it settled. Living is so expensive that many of the best pensions have had to close, so I feel I am wonderfully lucky.
Yesterday afternoon I covered about twelve acres of streets and buildings in fulfilling various official formalities, and now call all the prefects of police by their first names. I had no trouble, but it is tedious to go from one place to another. My official title on the Paris register is now “Demoiselle de Vestiaire,” and as that can refer both to relief work and to check girls in restaurants, I can give up one any time for the other.
Women’s Vestiaire
Men’s Vestiaire
I went to the station and brought my trunk here. I had dinner with Mrs. Bigelow, and we just fell on each other’s necks and couldn’t seem to let go. Those two days of separation have been pretty long. We went to church to the Wednesday evening meeting. We could hear them singing “Abide with Me” as we came up the street, and it was the first note of music that I had heard in many a long day, except what I played myself on the steamer. My heart just swelled up, and when we got in and sang the third verse, the tears were rolling down our cheeks. It was a wonderful service.
The sun shines to-day for the first time, and I have been out with my trusty map. You see such vital little scenes in the street—two girls poring over a letter from the front, and giggling and teasing each other; a little girl with tight black pig-tails, bare legs and socks, a full black cape, and a basket under her arm, standing on tippey-toes to ring an old bronze bell; a widow walking along with a little child, watching with an inscrutable expression a car full of soldiers starting for the front; a group of poor people, market-women, old men, and children, pressing closely around a sign-poster who is posting up a list, “Morts pour la Patrie.” Many times you see the signs: “Don’t talk, be careful, enemy ears are listening.” Oh, this country is at war, but I can’t tell you the inspiration that seems to be in the very streets. And it is so beautiful when I think that I am really to live here, to be chez moi, and have my own books and pictures and perhaps some plants, and be able to go about and see these things. I can’t tell you how happy I am. If the Statue of Liberty ever wants to see me again, she will have to turn a complete back somersault.
I send love home in bushels. There have been moments in these last few days! But never for one breath have I wished that I hadn’t set out, and now with my pension settled, my permis de séjour granted by the police, my trunk by my side, my work fairly started, the Shurtleffs perfectly wonderful, and Mrs. Bigelow at hand and happy, why, nothing could be happier than I am. And I never can thank you enough for letting me come. My one trouble now is writer’s cramp, so I must stop before I am too paralyzed to address the envelope!