ed as a street barricade during the Reign of Terror in the
days of the First Revolution. Said stove requires the concentrated
efforts of one husky Yank, speaking three languages--French, United
States, and profane--all the live-long day to keep it going. Even then
the man sitting nearest the window is always out of luck.

The walls are unkempt in appearance, as if the plaster had shivered
involuntarily for many a weary day before the coming of "les Americains"
and their insistence upon the installation of the stove. The paper is
seamed and smeared until it resembles a bird's-eye view of the
battlefield of the Marne. The ceiling is as smudged as the face of a
naughty little boy caught in the midst of a raid on the jam in the
pantry, due, no doubt, to the aforesaid stove and to the over-exuberant
rising-and-shining of the kerosene lamps. Some people ascribe the state
of the celling to the grade of tobacco which the Boss smokes; but the
Boss always thunders back, "Well, what the devil can a man do in a
country where even cornsilk would be a blessing?" And, as what the Boss
says goes, that ends it.

There is one rug on the floor, a dilapidated affair that might well be
the flayed hide of a flea-bitten mule. There is a mantlepiece,
stretching across what used to be a fireplace in the days of the First
Napoleon, but which is a fireplace no more. On top of the mantlepiece is
a lot of dry reading--wicked-looking little books full of fascinating
facts about how to kill people with a minimum of effort and ammunition.
On the floor, no matter how carefully the office occupants scrape their
hobnails before entering, there is always a thin coating of mud.

The office telephone is on the wall, instead of on the Boss's desk, as
it ought to be. One has to take down receiver and transmitter all in the
same piece in order to use it. And it has the same old Ford-crank
attachment on the side that is common to phones in the rural free
delivery districts of the United States of America.

Why Hats Are Worn.

Instead of being lined with bright young men in knobby business suits
and white stiff collars, the office is lined with far brighter young men
in much more businesslike khaki. They keep their hats on while they work
for they know not when they may have to dash out again into the cold and
the wind and the rain. They keep their coats on for the same reason;
there are no shirt-sleeves and cuff protectors in this o