Across the aisle from me two women are knitting—­not in a neighborly, gossipy way, chatting meanwhile, but silently, swiftly, nervously.  There is a psychological reason for women knitting just now, beyond the need of socks.  I know how these women feel!  I, even I, have begun to crochet!  I do it for the same reason that the old toper in time of stress takes to his glass.  It keeps me from thinking; it atrophies the brain; and now I know why the women of the East are so slow about getting the franchise.  They crochet and work in wool instead of thinking.  You can’t do both!  When the casualty lists are long, and letters from the Front far apart—­I crochet.

Once, when I was in great pain, the doctor gave me chloroform, and it seemed to me that a great black wall arose between me and pain!  The pain was there all right, but it could not get to me on account of the friendly wall which held it back—­and I was grateful!  Now I am grateful to have a crochet-needle and a ball of silcotton.  It is a sort of mental chloroform.  This is for the real dark moments, when the waves go over our heads....  We all have them, but of course they do not last.

More and more am I impressed with the wonderful comeback of the human soul.  We are like those Chinese toys, which, no matter how they are buffeted, will come back to an upright position.  It takes a little longer with us—­that is all; but given half a chance—­or less—­people will rise victorious over sin and sorrow, defeat and failure, and prove thereby the divinity which is in all of us!

As the light dimmed outside, I had time to observe my two traveling companions more closely.  Though at first sight they came under the same general description of “middle-aged women, possibly grandmothers, industriously knitting,” there was a wide difference between them as I observed them further.  One had a face which bore traces of many disappointments, and had now settled down into a state of sadness that was hopeless and final.  She had been a fine-looking woman once, too, and from her high forehead and well-shaped mouth I should take her to be a woman of considerable mental power, but there had been too much sorrow; she had belonged to a house of too much trouble, and it had dried up the fountains of her heart.  I could only describe her by one word, “winter-killed”!  She was like a tree which had burst into bud at the coaxing of the soft spring zephyrs again and again, only to be caught each time by the frost, and at last, when spring really came, it could win no answering thrill, for the heart of the tree was “winter-killed.”  The frost had come too often!

The other woman was older, more wrinkled, more weather-beaten, but there was a childlike eagerness about her that greatly attracted me.  She used her hands when she spoke, and smiled often.  This childish enthusiasm contrasted strangely with her old face, and seemed like the spirit of youth fluttering still around the grave of one whom it loved!