them over the
hard place. You cannot imagine how much it means to them.

I remember so well one poor little man who had reached the limit of
endurance, and when I found the sleepless nights were due to worry and
not to pain, the whole pitiful little story came out. His wife was ill,
his sister-in-law dead and there were six children to be looked
after--the eldest a boy of eleven--and no money. As long as his wife had
been able to run the farm they had been able to get along, but she had
given out. The French soldier only gets five cents a day, so he had
nothing to send them. He cried like a baby when I told him I could help
him. We sent off a money order for one hundred francs the next day, and
I wish you could have seen the change in that man. That little sum of
money put things straight six months ago and now everything is going
well. But he will never forget, and both he and his wife have a very
warm feeling in their hearts for the good people across the sea who came
to their rescue in a time of need. When I begin to talk of my beloved
French it is hard to stop.

[Illustration: My Salle--Christmas, 1916.]

January 1, 1917.

The men had a wonderful Christmas day. They were like a happy lot of
children. We decorated the wards with flags, holly, mistletoe, and paper
flowers that the men made, and a tree in each ward. You cannot imagine
how pretty they were. Each patient began the day with a sock that was
hung to the foot of his bed by the night nurses. In each was an orange,
a small bag of sweets, nuts and raisins, a handkerchief, pencil, tooth
brush, pocket comb and a small toy that pleased them almost more than
anything else, and which they at once passed on to their children. They
had a fine dinner--jam, stewed rabbit, peas, plum pudding, fruit, nuts,
raisins and sweets. The plum puddings were sent by the sister of one of
the nurses.

In the afternoon the trees were lighted and we had the official visit of
the medicine chef and all the staff. After the festivities were over we
began preparing for the tree for the refugee children. We had thought
that we would have enough left over to manage for fifty children, but
the list grew to one hundred and twenty-five. The mayor of the village
let us have a large room in his house, as the first place we had chosen
was too small. We had the tree on Sunday afternoon and three hundred and
thirty-one children arrived.