“Women and girls. The one on my right had been peddling matches when she was ‘taken on’—she couldn’t get anything else, so she told me. The one at my left was cashier in a butcher-shop, seven a week. Another had been a saleswoman in a jewelry store, seven a week. Next her a girl who, as a learner on a power-machine, had not arrived at the dignity of a salary. While the one taken on after me was in her second year at high school when eatables began to sky-rocket so fast last winter. She had to go to work, cash-girl in a department store at five a week, to help her father support her younger brothers and sisters.” The librarian shook her head and continued to regard me with speculative eyes. I could see that she was thinking of me, what she regarded as my peculiar taste, not of the persons about whom I had been talking. “Don’t you think it’s pathetic?” I began again after a short silence. “These women and girls are forced to think of such a catastrophe as the war as a godsend. From five dollars a week to fifteen, think what a relief it must be. I don’t believe that the girl who was selling matches made even—” Glancing up stream I caught my breath. “Hush,” I whispered, peering at a dark bulk on the river gliding toward us. “Hush!” the woman at my elbow repeated, and others taking up the word it ran the length of the piazza. “Yes! Yes! It is they,” the woman at my elbow exclaimed, half under her breath. “I saw them against a light on the water. They are in uniform—our boys!” It came on, that huge black ship; it made no sound, there was no ray of light. Against the reflections of the shore lights dancing on the water we made out, peering through the gloom, the trim young figures packing every deck and leaning from the port-holes. The other crafts on the river, as though recognizing the destination of the great ship and the preciousness of her freight, all made way for her—three of them crowding close against the shore in front of the Jane Leonard. “May we not call God’s blessing to them?” a woman’s voice farther along the piazza questioned, half sobbing. “Give the German spies in this house a chance to have their ship sunk as it leaves the harbor? Not much.” It was the little woman at my elbow. As they drew nearer—our boys—each woman found her pocket-handkerchief. There was no waving, no word; now and then a half-smothered sob. A mute tribute to the soldiers on the dark ship to which they responded as mutely—as the ship swept past, against the dancing lights on the water, we saw that they all bared their heads. Bending far out over the banisters of the piazza we watched it gliding away from us—a silent ship upon a silent river, no sound, no ray of light. Now and again as it passed a building on the island we would get a glimpse of the trim silhouette of a young figure. Under the bridge it slipped and beyond, at every heart-beat growing smaller and more dim. Then it melted into darkness—a black-gray speck upon a black-gray river.