Yet the charm of the American Officers' Hotel in Paris rested not alone in the real excellence of its cuisine, nor in the comfort of its cleanly sleeping rooms. It carried its ideals of genuine service far beyond these mere fundamentals. It recognized the almost universal Yankee desire to have one's shoes shined in a shop and so set up a regular American boot-blacking stand in one of its side corridors, a thing which every other Parisian hotel would have told you was quite impossible of accomplishment. It recognized the inconvenience of tedious waiting and long queues at the box office of the Paris theaters by setting up a theater ticket office in its lobby, which made no extra charge for the distinct service rendered. Nor was there a charge for the services of Miss Curtis, the charming little Red Cross girl, who went shopping with a fellow or for him, and who had a knack of getting right into those perplexing Paris shops and getting just what a fellow wanted at an astonishingly low price--for Paris in war times, anyway. Her range of experience was large; from the man with a silver star on each shoulder who wanted to buy a modish evening gown for his wife at a price not to exceed forty dollars, to the chunky Nevada lieutenant who had won three thousand francs at "redeye" on the preceding evening and was anxious to blow it all in the next morning in buying souvenirs for mother. With both she did her best. Her motto was that of the successful shop keeper: "We aim to please." When Mr. Boomer had this hotel set up and running and turned his attention to some other housing problems of our Red Cross, the management fell to Major H. C. Eberhart, who had been his assistant in Paris and before that had been affiliated in a managerial capacity with several large American houses. He carried forward the job so well begun. * * * * *