reopen again until three and close at six. You see those hours are
when everyone is busiest in the fields. The man or woman who has to
go to market on Saturday must leave work standing and make a long
trip into Quincy--and often they have three or four miles to go on foot
to do it--just at the hour when it is least easy to spare the time.

To make it harder still, a new order went out a few weeks ago. Every
man, woman, and child (over fifteen) in the war zone has to have,
after October 1, a carte d'identite, to which must be affixed a
photograph.

This regulation has resulted in the queerest of embarrassments. A
great number of these old peasants--and young ones too--never had
a photograph taken. There is no photographer. The photographer at
Esbly and the two at Meaux could not possibly get the people all
photographed, and, in this uncertain weather, the prints made, in the
delay allowed by the military authorities. A great cry of protestation
went up. Photographers of all sorts were sent into the commune. The
town crier beat his drum like mad, and announced the places where
the photographers would be on certain days and hours, and ordered
the people to assemble and be snapped.

One of the places chosen was the courtyard at Amelie's, and you
would have loved seeing these bronzed old peasants facing a
camera for the first time. Some of the results were funny, especially
when the hurried and overworked operator got two faces on the
same negative, as happened several times.

Real autumn weather is here, but, for that matter, it has been more
like autumn than summer since last spring. The fields are lovely to
see on days when the sun shines. I drove the other day just for the
pleasure of sitting in my perambulator, on the hillside, and looking
over the slope of the wide wheat fields, where the women, in their
cotton jackets and their wide hats, were reaping. The harvesting
never looked so picturesque. I could pick out, in the distance, the tall
figure of my Louise, with a sheaf on her head and a sickle in her
hand, striding across the fields, and I thought how a painter would
have loved the scene, with the long rays of the late September
sunset illuminating the yellow stretch.

Last Wednesday we had a little excitement here, because sixteen
German prisoners, who were working on a farm at Vareddes,
escaped--some of them disguised as women.

I wasn't a bit alarmed, as it hardly seemed possible that they would
venture