On almost every one of the noted shops “Ferme” is written, or it has been turned over to the use of the Red Cross.  Of the smaller shops those that remain open are chiefly bakeshops and chemists, but no man need go naked or hungry; in every block he will find at least one place where he can be clothed and fed.  But the theatres are all closed.  No one is in a mood to laugh, and certainly no one wishes to consider anything more serious than the present crisis.  So there are no revues, operas, or comedies.

The thing you missed perhaps most were the children in the Avenue des Champs Elysees.  For generations over that part of the public garden the children have held sway.  They knew it belonged to them, and into the gravel walks drove their tin spades with the same sense of ownership as at Deauville they dig up the shore.  Their straw hats and bare legs, their Normandy nurses, with enormous head-dresses, blue for a boy and pink for a girl, were, of the sights of Paris, one of the most familiar.  And when the children vanished they left a dreary wilderness.  You could look for a mile, from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, and not see a child.  The stalls, where they bought hoops and skipping-ropes, the flying wooden horses, Punch-and-Judy shows, booths where with milk they refreshed themselves and with bonbons made themselves ill, all were deserted and boarded up.

The closing down of the majority of the shops and hotels was not due to a desire on the part of those employed in them to avoid the Germans, but to get at the Germans.

On shop after shop are signs reading:  “The proprietor and staff are with the colors,” or “The personnel of this establishment is mobilized,” or “Monsieur------informs his clients that he is with his regiment.”

In the absence of men at the front, Frenchwomen, at all times capable and excellent managers, have surpassed themselves.  In my hotel there were employed seven women and one man.  In another hotel I visited the entire staff was composed of women.

An American banker offered his twenty-two polo ponies to the government.  They were refused as not heavy enough.  He did not know that, and supposed he had lost them.  Later he learned from the wife of his trainer, a Frenchwoman, that those employed in his stables at Versailles who had not gone to the front at the approach of the Germans had fled, and that for three weeks his string of twenty-two horses had been fed, groomed, and exercised by the trainer’s wife and her two little girls.

To an American it was very gratifying to hear the praise of the French and English for the American ambulance at Neuilly.  It is the outgrowth of the American hospital, and at the start of this war was organized by Mrs. Herrick, wife of our ambassador, and other ladies of the American colony in Paris, and the American doctors.  They took over the Lycee Pasteur, an enormous school at Neuilly, that had just been finished and never occupied, and converted it into what is a most splendidly equipped hospital.  In walking over the building you find it hard to believe that it was intended for any other than its present use.  The operating rooms, kitchens, wards, rooms for operating by Roentgen rays, and even a chapel have been installed.