to call on her committee (who have a
hundred other demands) or pay the deficit out of her own pocket. A
certain number of American contributors send her things regularly
through Mrs. Allen or Mrs. Willard, and occasionally some generous
outsider gives her a donation. I was told that the Greek Colony in
Paris had been most generous; and while I was there she published in
one of the newspapers an appeal for a hundred pillows for a hospital
in which she was interested, and received in the course of the next
three days over four hundred.

IV

I went with her one day to one of the eclope stations and to the Depot
des Isoles, outside of Paris, to help her distribute comfort
packages--which, by the way, covered the top of the automobile and
were piled so high inside that we disposed ourselves with some
difficulty. These packages, all neatly tied, and of varying sizes,
were in the nature of surprise bags of an extremely practical order.
Tobacco, pipes, cigarettes, chocolate, toothbrushes, soap,
pocket-knives, combs, safety-pins, handkerchiefs, needles-and-thread,
buttons, pocket mirrors, post-cards, pencils, are a few of the
articles I recall. The members of the Committee meet at her house
twice a week to do up the bundles, and her servants, also, do a great
deal of the practical work.

It was a long drive through Paris and to the depots beyond. A year
before we should have been held up at the point of the bayonet every
few yards, but in 1916 we rolled on unhindered. Paris is no longer in
the War Zone, although as we passed the fortifications we saw men
standing beside the upward pointing guns, and I was told that this
vigilance does not relax day or night.

Later, I shall have much to say about the eclopes, but it is enough
to explain here that "eclope," in the new adaptation of the word,
stands for a man who is not wounded, or ill enough for a military
hospital, but for whom a brief rest in comfortable quarters is
imperative. The stations provided for them, principally through the
instrumentality of another remarkable Frenchwoman, Mlle. Javal, now
number about one hundred and thirty, and are either behind the lines
or in the neighborhood of Paris or other large cities. The one we
visited, Le Bourget, is among the largest and most important, and the
Commandant, M. de L'Horme, is as interested as a father in his
children. The yard when we arrived was full of soldiers, some about to
march out and entrain for the front,