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
To come back to Sunday evening. I played at the meeting the same
programme as on Monday. To my surprise, Dr. Shurtleff also made a speech
about grandfather, whom he knew in Chicago when he (Dr. Shurtleff) was a
young man. Many people came up and spoke to me afterwards, and I found
that lots of them knew the family in Chicago. Their enthusiasm was quite
exciting and made me feel almost like writing war songs myself. Wouldn't
it be wonderful to hear grandfather's "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," sung in
France!
Yesterday--Easter Monday--we all gave up our holiday to go to the
Vestiaire and help to move our ouvroir department into a little store up
the street. I have explained that the work is carried on in an apartment
on the ground floor at 18 rue Ernest Cresson--one room is the women's
vestiaire, another, the men's vestiaire, a third Mrs. Shurtleff's
office, and a fourth, the ouvroir, where sewing and all kinds of work is
given out to the refugees. We have been crowded always, but of late it
has been almost impossible to work in the front two rooms with so many
people doing different things at once. People would keep running in and
out of Mrs. Shurtleff's office while she was dictating, to look up
records, or to get down reserve stock from the shelves; the officer of
the day would have to interview refugees in a corner of the ouvroir,
while lines of other refugees were waiting to call for, and hand in,
work--the confusion was impossible. The two rooms together are not as
big as the den at home.
Well, Mrs. Shurtleff, who goes around this world with her eyes open, I
can tell you, discovered a little store that had been closed since the
beginning of the war. It had been rented by a German. He was chased away
in 1914, his windows broken, and the place roughly boarded up. Mrs.
Shurtleff sought out the proprietor, rented it, and had it repaired.
Saturday word came that we could move in. We have been so crazy to
spread out a little that when some one suggested that all hands should
report on Easter Monday,--one of the great holidays here,--and get the
moving actually done, we all volunteered. At nine o'clock we started. We
took things down off shelves, stood in line and passed them through the
window, where Miss Curtis received them and stuffed them into the Ford.
When the poor little car was so laden down with clothes and materials
and bundles that it looked as though it would burst a blood vessel, it
started off and we all ran along beside it up to the new shop. There we
formed another line, and unloaded the car and put the things on the
waiting shelves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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