This will reach you soon after you arrive in the great city of tall buildings.  More will follow, and I expect they will be so gay that you will rejoice to have even a postal tie with La Belle France, to which, if you are a real good American, you will come back when you die—­if you do not before.

IV

July 16, 1914.

Your Fourth of July letter came this morning.  It was lively reading, especially coming so soon after my first quatorze de juillet in the country.  The day was a great contrast to the many remembrances I have of Bastille Day in Paris.  How I remember my first experience of that fete, when my bedroom window overlooked one of the squares where the band played for the three nights of dancing.  That was a fierce experience after the novelty of the first night had worn off, when hour after hour the dance music droned on, and hour after hour the dancing feet on the pavement nearly drove me frantic.  To offset it I have memories of the Champs-Elysees and the Place de l’Hotel de Ville turned into a fairyland.  I am glad I saw all that.  The memory hangs in my mind like a lovely picture.  Out here it was all as still as—­I was going to say Sunday, but I should have to say a New England Sunday, as out here Sunday is just like any other day.  There was not even a ringing of bells.  The only difference there was to me was that Amelie drove Pere over to Coutevroult, on the other side of the valley of the Grand Morin, where he played for the dance, and did not get back until long after daylight.  I did put out my flags in honor of the day.  That was the extent of my celebrating.

In the evening there was a procession at Voisins, and from Meaux and the other towns on the hill there was an occasional rocket.  It was not really an exciting day.

The procession at Voisins was a primitive affair, but, to me, all the prettier for that.  It looked so quaint with its queer lanterns, its few flags, its children and men in blouses, strolling through the crooked, hilly streets of the old town, to the tap of the drum.  No French procession, except it be soldiers, ever marches.  If you ever saw a funeral procession going through the street, or one going about a church, you do not need to be told that.

I was glad that this little procession here kept so much of its old-time character, but I was sorry it was not gayer.  Still, it was so picturesque that it made me regret anew, what I have so many times regretted of late years, that so many of the old habits of country life in France are passing away, as they are, for that matter, all over Europe, along with ignorance and national costumes.