Christine arranged the mimosa in tall brass shell cases from Château-Thierry. "See my flowers!" she exclaimed. "This is better than war!"
The Consul-General (always a Christmas Eve guest in our home); the colonel commanding the hospital in the Rue de Chevreuse; a New York editor and his wife; a confrère of the French press and his wife; a Peace Delegate; and the head of a New York publishing firm, who looked in to see if we were really working; sat down with us to dinner, squeezed in with our A. E. F. guests. When the last flicker of plum-pudding sauce died down, we set to work for the Christmas Eve preparations. There was no question of rank or age! Each one fell to the task at hand. Dishes, glasses, bottles, doilies disappeared into the kitchen. The table was set for the big party, piles of plates with knives and forks on each corner, sandwiches and rolls, a cold boiled ham, a tongue écarlate as tongues come in Paris, turkeys roasted by our baker, olives, salted almonds, army graham crackers, candy, a tall glass jar of golden honey worth its weight in gold, and the fruit cake with sprigs of holly that comes across the Atlantic every Christmas from a dear American friend. People could help themselves. How and when—I never worry about that. My only care is to have enough for all comers.
We sent out no invitations. The news simply passed by word of mouth that friends and friends' friends were welcome on Christmas Eve. In a corner of the drawing-room the engineers of the party made the Christmas tree stand up. The trimmings were on the floor. Whoever wanted to could decorate. With the trenches of five years between us and Germany, Christmas tree trimmings were pitiful if judged by ante-bellum standards. I wonder what my children are going to think when they see this Christmas a full-grown tree with the wealth of balls and stars and tinsel Americans have to use. In Paris we had so few baubles and pieced out with colored string and cotton and flags and ribbon. But the effect was not bad with the brains of half a hundred trimmers contributing to work out ideas on a tree that did not come up to my chin.
We started the victrola—"Minuit, Chrétien," "It Came upon a Midnight Clear," "Adeste Fideles," and—whisper it softly—"Heilige Nacht." Then our guests began to come until salons and hall and dining-room overflowed into bed-rooms. Never again can I hope to have under my roof a party like that, representing many of the nations that had fought together on the soil of France, but with homesick Americans, Christmas hungry, predominating. The first to arrive were patients from the American Hospital in the Rue de Chevreuse who had been unable to forget the nightmare of war when the armistice came.
Crutches and the music, the tree and my children, an American home—the first reaction was not merriment. I felt instinctively that something had to be done. "Heilige Nacht" brought a hush. Someone turned off the phonograph. Bill took in the situation. Everyone in America who reads knows Bill. He backed up into a corner by the bookcase, took off his glasses, and began to make a speech.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am an unregenerate soul. There is not a respectable bone in my body. I am going to sing you a little ditty, the national anthem of California." Here Bill winked his eyes and opened his mouth wide to sing:
"Hallelujah! I'm a bum!"
"The writer of the song is an I. W. W.," he interrupted himself, "and at the end of the first line from upstairs is heard the voice of his wife demanding (here Bill changed to high falsetto),
"Oh, why don't you work
As other men do?"
Then the I. W. W. answers gently,