y performance I gave during the tour, I told my audience what I
was doing and the object of the fund, and, although I addressed
myself chiefly to the Scots, there has been a most generous and
touching response from Americans as well.

We distributed little plaid-bordered envelopes, in which folk were
invited to send contributions to the bank in New York that was the
American depository. And after each performance Mrs. Lauder stood in
the lobby and sold little envelopes full of stamps, "sticky backs,"
as she called them, like the Red Cross seals that have been sold so
long in America at Christmas time. She sold them for a quarter, or
for whatever they would bring, and all the money went to the fund.

I had a novel experience sometimes. Often I would no sooner have
explained what I was doing than I would feel myself the target of a
sort of bombardment. At first I thought Germans were shooting at me,
but I soon learned that it was money that was being thrown! And every
day my dressing-table would be piled high with checks and money
orders and paper money sent direct to me instead of to the bank. But
I had to ask the guid folk to cease firing--the money was too apt to
be lost!

Folk of all races gave liberally. I was deeply touched at Hot
Springs, Arkansas, where the stage hands gave me the money they had
received for their work during my engagement.

CHAPTER XXVIII

I have stopped for a wee digression about my fund. I saw many
interesting things in France, and dreadful things. And it was
impressed upon me more and more that the Hun knows no mercy. The
wicked, wanton things he did in France, and that I saw!

There was Mont St. Quentin, one of the very strongest of the
positions out of which the British turned him. There was a chateau
there, a bonnie place. And hard by was a wee cemetery. The Hun had
smashed its pretty monuments, and he had reached into that sacred
soil with his filthy claws, and dragged out the dead from their
resting-place, and scattered their helpless bones about.

He ruined Peronne in wanton fury because it was passing from his
grip. He wrecked its old cathedral, once one of the loveliest sights
in France. He took away the old fleurs-de-lis from the great gates of
Peronne. He stole and carried away the statues that used to stand in
the old square. He left the great statue of St. Peter, still standing
in the churchyard, but its thumb was broken off. I found it, as I
rummaged about idly in the