The Living Present

The first room was an immense apartment with an open space beyond the beds filled to-day with men who crowded about Madame Balli, as much to get th

at on the outside of Madame Balli's mob and talked to one of the infirmières. She was a Frenchwoman married to an Irishman who w

mained idle and let our minds dwell upon our men at the Front? We should go mad. As it is, we are so tired at night that we

inen with a veil of the same stiff material and the red cross on her

orse than the last, until it was almost a relief to come to the one where the men had just been

de-but from rage against the devilish powers that unloosed this horror upon the world. One of the grim ironies of this war is that the Hohenzollerns and the junkers are so constituted mentally that they never will be haunted with awful visions l

hile the face is not only red and swollen, but twisted, the mouth almost parallel with the nose-and often there is no nose-a whole cheek missing, an eye gone, or both; sometimes the whole mouth and chin have been blown away; and I saw one face that

ace bandaged, his mouth twisted almost into his right ear, and a mere remnant

oung-and lament that no girl would have them now; but she always consoled them by the assur

nd. The two older women-his mother and aunt, no doubt-looked stolid, as women of that class always do, but the girl sat staring straight before her with an expression of bitter resentment I shall never forget. She looked as if she were giving up every youthful illusion, and reali

s still too weak to be tempted by ordinary hospital fare: soup extract, jellies, compotes, cocoa, preserves, etc. Mr. Holman-Black came staggering af

sense of consecration, of absolute selflessness as I did from Mr. Holman-Black. He and his brother have a beautiful little h?tel, and for many years before the war were among the most brilliant contributors to the musical life of the great capital; but there has been no entertaining in those charming rooms since August, 1914. Mr. Holman-Black is parrain (godfather) to three hundred and twenty soldiers at the Front, n