I decided on a fiacre for my trip from hotel to station. It would be safer, I thought. But I learned, on our interminable way, that defensive fighting in the streets of Bordeaux is far more terrifying, far more dangerous than the aggressive taxi kind. We were run into twice and just missed more times than I could count, and besides my conveyance was always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. ’Spite all the talk of periscopes and subs, the journey across the ocean was parlor croquet compared to my fiacre ride in Bordeaux. While awaiting my turn at the ticket window I observed at the gate a French soldier wearing a large businesslike bayonet. “Probably to punch tickets with,” I thought, but was mistaken. Another gentleman attended to that duty, and the soldier did not give me so much as the honor of a glance. Outside on the platform were a few of the Red Cross and Y. M. C. A. men of our ship, and I learned from them that one of their number had suffered a sadder fate than I. He had tried to get by on a Holland passport, viséed at the French consulate in New York, and been quietly but firmly persuaded to take the next boat back home. I shared a compartment on the train with a native of the Bronx, and a French lady who just couldn’t make her eyes behave, and two bored-looking French gentlemen of past middle age, not to mention in detail much more baggage than there was room for. The lady and the two gentlemen wore gloves, which made the Bronxite and me feel very bourgeois. Our train crew, with the possible exception of the engineer and fireman whom I didn’t see, was female, and, thinking I might some time require the services of the porter, I looked in my dictionary for the feminine of George. To try my knowledge of française, I had purchased at the station a copy of _Le Cri de Paris_. I found that I could read it very easily by consulting the dictionary every time I came to a word. But the scenery and the people were more interesting than _Le Cri_, the former especially. Perfect automobile roads, lined with trees; fields, and truck gardens in which aged men and women, young girls and little boys were at work; green hills and valleys; winding rivers and brooks, and an occasional château or a town of fascinating architecture--these helped to make us forget the heat and dust of the trip and the ear-splitting shrieks of our engines. No wonder the boche coveted his neighbor’s house. We stopped for some time at one particularly beautiful town and went out for air. I wondered audibly concerning the name of the place. An American companion looked at the signs round the station. “It’s Sortie,” he said. But it wasn’t. It was Angoulême, and I wouldn’t mind moving thither. My American friend was probably from Exit, Michigan.