when I got done the people were using their
handkerchiefs, and I was sniffing pretty hard myself, but we raised
eighty-five dollars then and there, and now I know I will never be
scared again. I used to think it was so ladylike to be nervous about
speaking, and now I know it is just a form of selfishness. I was
simply scared that I would not do well, thinking all the time of
myself. But now everything has changed and I am ready to do anything I
can."

"Go on," I said; "tell me some more. Remember that you women to-day
made me promise to write down how this war is hitting us, and I merely
promised to write what I heard and saw. I am not going to make up
anything, so you are all under obligation to tell me all you can. I am
not to be the author of this book, but only the historian."

"It won't be hard," she said encouragingly. "There is so much
happening every day that it will be harder to decide what to leave out
than to find things to put in. In this time of excitement the lid is
off, I tell you; the bars are down; we can see right into the hearts
of people. It is like a fire or an earthquake when all the doors are
open and the folks are carrying their dearest possessions into the
street, and they are all real people now, and they have lost all
their little mincing airs and all their lawdie-daw. But believe me, we
have been some fiddlers! When I look around this house I see evidence
of it everywhere; look at that abomination now"--She pointed to an
elaborately beaded match-safe which hung on the wall.

It bore on it the word, "Matches," in ornate letters, all made of
beads, but I noticed that its empty condition belied the inscription.

"Think of the hours of labor that some one has put on that," she went
on scornfully, "and now it is such an aristocrat that it takes up all
its time at that and has no time to be useful. I know now that it
never really intended to hold matches, but simply lives to mock the
honest seeker who really needs a match. I have been a real sinner
myself," she went on after a pause; "I have been a fiddler, all right.
I may as well make a clean breast of it,--I made that match-safe and
nearly bored my eyes out doing it, and was so nervous and cross that I
was not fit to live with."

"I can't believe that," I said.

"Well, I sure was some snappy. I have teased out towel ends, and made
patterns on them; I've punched holes in linen and sewed them up
again--there is no form of foolishness that I