“You are guessing,” accused the voice. The officer was greatly confused.
“No, no, mademoiselle!” he protested. “Truly, I thought it was an ‘M.’”
He laughed guiltily. The laugh shook you. You saw all that he could never see: inside the room the great ladies and latest American countesses, eager to help, forgetful of self, full of wonderful, womanly sympathy; and outside, the Place de la Concorde, the gardens of the Tuileries, the trees of the Champs-Élysées, the sun setting behind the gilded dome of the Invalides. All these were lost to him, and yet as he sat in the darkness, because he could not tell an N from an M, he laughed, and laughed happily. From where did he draw his strength and courage? Was it the instinct for life that makes a drowning man fight against an ocean? Was it his training as an officer of the Grande Armée? Was it that spirit of the French that is the one thing no German knows, and no German can ever break? Or was it the sound of a woman’s voice and the touch of a woman’s hand? If the reader wants to contribute something to help teach a new profession to these gentlemen, who in the fight for civilization have contributed their eyesight, write to the secretary of the committee, Mrs. Peter Cooper Hewitt, Hôtel Ritz, Paris.
A poster advertising the fund to bring from the trenches “permissionaires,” those soldiers who obtain permission to return home for six days.
There are some other very good bargains. Are you a lover of art, and would you become a patron of art? If that is your wish, you can buy an original water-color for fifty cents, and so help an art student who is fighting at the front, and assist in keeping alive his family in Paris. Is not that a good bargain?
As everybody knows, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris is free to students from all the world. It is the alma mater of some of the best-known American artists and architects. On its rolls are the names of Sargent, St. Gaudens, Stanford White, Whitney Warren, Beckwith, Coffin, MacMonnies.
Certain schools and colleges are so fortunate as to inspire great devotion on the part of their students, as, in the story told of every college, of the student being led from the football field, who struggles in front of the grand stand and shouts: “Let me go back. I’d die for dear old ——”