I had a novel experience sometimes. Often I would no sooner have explained what I was doing than I would feel myself the target of a sort of bombardment. At first I thought Germans were shooting at me, but I soon learned that it was money that was being thrown! And every day my dressing-table would be piled high with checks and money orders and paper money sent direct to me instead of to the bank. But I had to ask the guid folk to cease firing--the money was too apt to be lost! Folk of all races gave liberally. I was deeply touched at Hot Springs, Arkansas, where the stage hands gave me the money they had received for their work during my engagement. CHAPTER XXVIII I have stopped for a wee digression about my fund. I saw many interesting things in France, and dreadful things. And it was impressed upon me more and more that the Hun knows no mercy. The wicked, wanton things he did in France, and that I saw! There was Mont St. Quentin, one of the very strongest of the positions out of which the British turned him. There was a chateau there, a bonnie place. And hard by was a wee cemetery. The Hun had smashed its pretty monuments, and he had reached into that sacred soil with his filthy claws, and dragged out the dead from their resting-place, and scattered their helpless bones about. He ruined Peronne in wanton fury because it was passing from his grip. He wrecked its old cathedral, once one of the loveliest sights in France. He took away the old fleurs-de-lis from the great gates of Peronne. He stole and carried away the statues that used to stand in the old square. He left the great statue of St. Peter, still standing in the churchyard, but its thumb was broken off. I found it, as I rummaged about idly in the debris at the statue's foot. It was no casual looting that the Huns did. They did their work methodically, systematically. It was a sight to make the angels weep. As I left the ruined cathedral I met a couple of French poilus, and tried to talk with them. But they spoke "very leetle" English, and I fired all my French words at them in one sentence. "Oui, oui, madame," I said. "Encore pomme du terre. Fini!" They laughed, but we did no get far with our talk! Not in French. "You can't love the Hun much, after this," I said. "Ze Hun? Ze bloody Boche?" cried one of them. "I keel heem all my life!" I was glad to quit Peronne. The rape of that lovely church saddened me more than almost any sight I saw in France. I did not care to look at it. So I was glad when we motored on to the headquarters of the Fourth Army, where I had the honor of meeting one of Britain's greatest soldiers, General Sir Henry Rawlinson, who greeted us most cordially, and invited us to dinner. After dinner we drove on toward Amiens. We were swinging back now, toward Boulogne, and were scheduled to sleep that night at Amiens-- which the Germans held for a few days, during their first rush toward Paris, before the Marne, but did not have time to destroy.