I had been sitting in deep thought, and although returning to my Familey was feeling sad at the idea of my Country at war and I not helping.  Because what could I do, alone and unarmed?  What was my strength against that of the German Army?  A trifle light as air!

It was at this point in my pain and feeling of being utterly useless, that a young man in the next seat asked if he might close the Window, owing to Soot and having no other coller with him.  I assented.

How little did I realize that although resembling any other Male of twenty years, he was realy Providence?

The way it happened was in this manner.  Although not supposed to talk on trains, owing to once getting the wrong suit-case, etcetera, one cannot very well refuse to anser if one is merely asked about a Window.  And also I pride myself on knowing Human Nature, being seldom decieved as to whether a gentleman or not.  I gave him a steady glance, and saw that he was one.

I then merely said to him that I hoped he intended to enlist, because I felt that I could at least do this much for my Native Land.

“I have already done so,” he said, and sat down beside me.  He was very interesting and I think will make a good soldier, although not handsome.  He said he had been to Plattsburg the summer before, drilling, and had not been the same since, feeling now very ernest and only smoking three times a day.  And he was two inches smaller in the waste and three inches more in chest.  He then said: 

“If some of you girls with nothing to do would only try it you would have a new outlook on Life.”

“Nothing to do!” I retorted, in an angry manner.  “I am sick and tired of the way my Sex is always reproached as having nothing to do.  If you consider French and music and Algebra and History and English composition nothing, as well as keeping house and having children and atending to social duties, I do not.”

“Sorry,” he said, stiffly.  “Of course I had no idea—­do you mean that you have a Familey of your own?”

“I was refering to my Sex in general,” I replied, in a cold tone.

He then said that there were Camps for girls, like Plattsburg only more Femanine, and that they were bully. (This was his word.  I do not use slang.)

“You see,” he said, “they take a lot of over-indulged society girls and make them over into real People.”

Ye gods!  Over-indulged!

“Why don’t you go to one?” he then asked.

“Evadently,” I said, “I am not a real Person.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go as far as that.  But there isn’t much left of the way God made a girl, by the time she’s been curled and dressed and governessed for years, is there?  They can’t even walk, but they talk about helping in the War.  It makes me sick!”

I now saw that I had made a mistake, and began reading a Magazine, so he went back to his seat and we were as strangers again.  As I was very angry I again opened my window, and he got a cinder in his eye and had to have the Porter get it out.