tions with
an abandon which betrayed their superior intelligence, for she is a
very plain woman. Miss O'Brien, an Irish girl who has spent her life
in Paris and looks like the pictures in some old Book of
Beauty--immense blue eyes, tiny regular features, small oval face,
chestnut hair, pink-and-white skin, and a tall "willowy" figure--was
second in their critical esteem, because she did not relieve their
monotonous life with fun, but sang, instead, sweet or stirring songs
in a really beautiful voice. The other two, young entertainers of the
vaudeville stage, were not so accomplished but were applauded
politely, and as they possessed a liberal share of the grace and charm
of the Frenchwoman and were exquisitely dressed, no doubt men still
recall them on dreary nights in trenches.

I sat on the platform and watched at close range the faces of these
soldiers of France. They were all from the people, of course, but
there was not a face that was not alive with quick intelligence, and
it struck me anew--as it always did when I had an opportunity to see a
large number of Frenchmen together at close range--how little one face
resembled the other. The French are a race of individuals. There is no
type. It occurred to me that if during my lifetime the reins of all
the Governments, my own included, were seized by the people, I should
move over and trust my destinies to the proletariat of France. Their
lively minds and quick sympathies would make their rule tolerable at
least. As I have said before, the race has genius.

After we had distributed the usual gifts, I concluded to drive home in
the car of the youngest of the vaudeville artists, as taxis in that
region were nonexistent, and Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black would
be detained for another hour. Mademoiselle Berty was with us, and in
the midst of the rapid conversation--which never slackened!--she made
some allusion to the son of this little artist, and I exclaimed
involuntarily:

"You married? I never should have imagined it."

Why on earth I ever made such a banal remark to a French
vaudevilliste, whose clothes, jewels, and automobile represented an
income as incompatible with fixed salaries as with war time, I cannot
imagine. Automatic Americanism, no doubt.

Mlle. Berty lost no time correcting me. "Oh, Hortense is not married,"
she merely remarked. "But she has a splendid son--twelve years old."

Being the only embarrassed member of the party, I hastened to assu