Devoting a short paragraph to the latter, which is her due. She is charming, beautiful, of what might be called the flower of French gentility, and is twenty-three. She speaks English very well, plays the piano and violoncello, and is much interested in art. She has not had so much time for these, however, since the war has centered her real interests in the soldiers at the Front. It was she who described the spirit of Frenchmen as “so beautiful.” Speaking of a mass for their dead, which was held by the family some six months ago, the smile did not fade, but there was sadness in her voice as she said, “More than twenty-five of our poor boys had died at that time.” That included cousins and second cousins of their family, but she said, “We must be happy.” She just came in where we are all writing letters, with her hair hanging about her shoulders. I didn’t notice what she was saying, but I think she was thanking me very much for a little sixty cent maiden-hair fern with a little white flower in the center which I brought her on the way from the barber shop as a New Years present. She set it on her desk. It will grow there. They are going out to distribute meat to some poor people, so I shall go with them, and continue this anon. This being anon, I have forgotten titles and history and nationality in the acquaintance of the finest people I have ever met.... There is a climax in one’s estimate of the worthiness of people, and I believe I have reached it. Their fortunes and family have been irreparably depleted by the war, yet they devote all their time and energies to the poor, the wounded, and their soldiers on the firing line. They are French, yet knowing them has wiped out the possibility of superiority of nationality or race. They are Catholics, yet knowing them has wiped out the possibility of superiority of faith or religion. I do not understand their language well enough to know them as they are to be known, nor my own language well enough to give them their due. Their faith, their hope, their charity, is superior to any I have ever known. They attend mass early and late. They share their prosperity among all. They fill their holidays with the writing of letters to those in the trenches who are theirs to cheer. I have known the home life of American families as I am seeing the life of this French family, and I am convinced that these people are no less superior in the art of living than in the other arts. My standards of life and ambitions and ideals and philosophy are not so high as I thought they were. They fill the bill as far as self-restraint is concerned, but as for using the superior ability so gained in the benefiting of other lives I am almost wholly lacking. I thought my character was getting pretty well rounded out, and now I find it is still only a bulged seed, with the skin cracked by sudden growth.