Her eyes closed. Her muscles stiffened as she gripped the edge of the table. It looked as though she was going to faint. She remained so for a few minutes, then she threw her head back and with all her strength she yelled at the top of her voice: "Vive la France! Vive la France! Vive la France!" And the mother and the father of the dead soldier repeated the cry with tears in their eyes, as loudly as they could, to dull the edge of their cutting pain, to drown their sorrow. "You said, Bideaux, I had a brave son. But how much braver is your daughter!" * * * * * "What is your name, please?" Mr. Lauders asked the young Frenchwoman in mourning applying for the position of designer in his dressmaking shop. "My name is Marguerite V. L. F. Clement." "Full name, please?" "Marguerite Vive la France Clement----" And every time Marguerite's pain is too sharp to bear she cries out: "Vive la France!" It's now more than four years since the Boche invaded New York through the French quarter. Gray and black are the dominant colors of what was the most joyous district of our city. LULEIKA, THE RICH WIDOW You hear people talk about the disadvantages of living in New York. Personally, I cannot think of greater happiness than being in this great metropolis, if only for the reason that I can be all over Europe in one night. Five cents carfare lands you in the French district. Five more minutes reading of the "Subway Sun" lands you in Hungary; from whence you can tramp in fifteen minutes to Italy or Greece or Turkey, as the spirit moves you or inclination dictates. You can eat your breakfast in a Russian restaurant on East Fifth Street, have caviar and Bolshevik talk; go for lunch in China, on Mott Street, where they will serve you tea grown on the highest mountain of Asia; for dinner you can have your choice between Persian, French, Hindu or Greek menus, and still have the cuisines of a dozen other foreign nationalities to choose from if you are alive the next morning. And now, in case you ever intend going down to the Syrian Quarter for supper and atmosphere, I will acquaint you with the story of Luleika, as it was told to me by Malouf the jeweler, who is a Mohammedan gentleman, born in Constantinople. Malouf believes in the glory of Allah. His face is as dry as smoked parchment, and he touches the ground with his forehead twice a day, at sunrise and sundown, as it is commanded in the Koran. Malouf lives on Washington Street, which is at a stone's throw from the Statue of Liberty in the Bay of New York. * * * * * "And it is written in the Koran: 'For whosoever sells his soul for gain, shall suffer in his flesh, and whosoever sells his flesh for gain shall suffer in his soul.' "But you, my listener, are either a Christian Giaour or a Yehudi Kepek, and know nothing about the Koran.