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-night, I am tired and dusty, but miles and miles of white French
roads bordered by forests, and meadows, and houses, and towns, and
children, and horses, and castles, and flags, are going round in my
head.
"There ne'er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Or of people in church or the park...."
To-day is a holiday, being the day after Pentecost (Whit-Monday in
England), and Marje and I decided to go off for two days somewhere in
the country. Miss Curtis had planned to move a family to-day in the
Association car,--forgetting that Mrs. Shurtleff had promised us that we
could go out in it,--so she handed us over her Ford touring-car, which
was perfectly wonderful for us.
Yesterday morning we started off in dazzling sunshine with a clear blue
sky overhead. We took the road to Fontainebleau, which is long and
straight and bordered all the way--fifty kilometres--with great
evergreen trees. We took our hats off and talked, and laughed, and sang,
and whistled, and watched the countryside go flying by; the trees and
fields were the most luscious green, and everywhere were huge patches of
mustard, growing dense and brilliant yellow. Little towns, red-roofed,
with a single church spire and a few pointed haystacks, would huddle to
themselves far off on the horizon, and always we kept tearing along
between the trees, leaving Paris and carking care behind.
We stopped for luncheon under a particularly splendid tree and laid out
our store on the thick grass. Sardines, fresh bread, cheese, preserved
plums, strawberries, olives stuffed with anchovies, Cailler's chocolate
and orangeade. I never had anything taste so good, and no salt air any
nearer than Havre to account for it. You can't imagine what fun we had.
Finally when we were replete, we lay down and looked up into the leaves
and listened to the most heavenly birds.
We reached Fontainebleau at about two. The "New York Herald" had said
something about its being American day at F. that Sunday, but we weren't
prepared for such an exhibition of American flags as greeted us on all
the houses and shops, and on the palais itself. We knew, however, that
all this demonstration meant that the hotels were full, so we looked to
getting a room for the night before seeing anything. Not a thing to be
had. Thank fortune we were in a car and could go on to the next town.
There was a special invitation for all Americans to visit the
Fontainebleau golf course, so we made tracks out in that direction, as
the palais and grounds were overrun with permissionnaires and the usual
holiday crowds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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