The Living Present

war. I went to this important Southern city (a beautiful city, which I shall always associate with the scent of locust[B]-blossoms) at

of one silk merchant and the widow of another. This charming young woman, who had spent her married life in New York, by the way, took me everywhere, and although we traversed many vast distance

d too plucky to live on charity, had been among the first to ask for work. The directeur beat his forehead when I asked him how they

is on both sides of a river-is not only a junction, it not only has industries of all sorts besides the greatest silk factories in the world, but every train these days brings down wounded for its many hospitals, and the next train br

. In countless other ouvroirs they were cutting and making uniforms with the same facility that men had long since acquired, or running sleeping bags through

o had only one arm, and the left at that, and only a thumb and little finger remaining of the ten he had taken into war, learning to write anew. When I was shown one of his exercises I was astounded. He wrote far better than I have ever done, and I can recall few handwritings so precise and elegant. One may imagine what a man acc

RAGE ELECTRIQUE

is case. He was large and strong and ruddy and he had no hands. Human ingenuity had not yet evolved far enough for him. He was crying quietly as he turned away. But his case

g, except food, they may demand, and in this she has been

h the now famous comfort packages. Some of them she and her committee put up themselves; others are brought in by members of the family or the friends of the unfortunate men in Germany. The pièce de résistance had always been a round loaf of bread, but on the day I first visited

e begging bread of the French prisoners, and this, of