Over Periscope Pond : $b Letters from two American girls in Paris October 1916-January 1918Root, Esther Sayles
History
Over Periscope Pond : $b Letters from two American girls in Paris October 1916-January 1918
Root, Esther Sayles
World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The field work is the visiting and investigation of applicants. The war
work of the Students Atelier Reunions has become known by word of mouth
among the refugees. Of course, the reports and results of our work
travel like wildfire and we are inundated with requests. After receiving
a letter from a refugee the case is looked up by two field workers and
reported at a meeting of the committee the following Saturday morning. A
vote is taken as to what to do and how much to give if it is decided to
give anything. The people are then told to present themselves at the
Vestiaire and we give them what they need. Every type of man, woman, and
child has crossed our threshold even within my month of service. How I
love them all!
I try to get each story as I measure the person and search the stock and
try on and tie up and list. Mother would die to see me, who have never
known anything more about children than that they belonged to the animal
kingdom and were awful little monkeys and might better approach more
nearly the vegetable kingdom, even if they were darlings--to see me tell
some mother of ten that "her little Yvonne is large for eight," or that
"Renaud has small feet for a boy of twelve." It is I who measure and
mark children's clothes as they are sent to us, according to age, and in
centimeters at that. I have been driven to ascertaining my own waist
measure by the same rating and now go about heavily veiled.
My good fortune has been to be made one of the field workers and I go
with either Miss Curtis or Miss Sturgis every Monday and Wednesday. Two
always go together because, until we have been to a place once, we don't
know what we are getting into, and it would be foolish to go alone way
to the back of the top of these big dark buildings without knowing what
sort of people lived there. In their homes you do see the people chez
eux. We see the extremes of cleanliness and filth, thrift and
abjectness. I shall not stop to describe individual homes now, but I can
tell you some of them are rare. In one home of about the same stratum as
the Russian family Mother and I visited last Christmas, I stepped
gingerly among the rags, coal-dust, food, and so forth on the floor, and
went and sat beside the dirtiest but the darlingest child you ever
saw,--blue eyes with black lashes, which always get me, you know,--but
its nose running fearfully. Miss Curtis did the questioning, but I
interrupted every three minutes to beseech the mother to wipe the
offending organ. I finally learned that the child ought to have an
operation, but it is only twenty-five months old and the doctor will not
operate until she is three. I showed her the buttons on my glove,
fastening and unfastening them. She looked up to me with her dirty
little mouth smiling radiantly and said, "Tiens!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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