I am reprinting here, in response to requests, certain recent experiences
in Great Britain and France. These were selected in the hope of
conveying to American readers some idea of the atmosphere, of “what it is
like” in these countries under the immediate shadow of the battle clouds.
It was what I myself most wished to know. My idea was first to send home
my impressions while they were fresh, and to refrain as far as possible
from comment and judgment until I should have had time to make a fuller
survey. Hence I chose as a title for these articles,–intended to be
preliminary, “A Traveller in War-Time.” I tried to banish from my mind
all previous impressions gained from reading. I wished to be free for
the moment to accept and record the chance invitation or adventure,
wherever met with, at the Front, in the streets of Paris, in Ireland, or
on the London omnibus. Later on, I hoped to write a book summarizing the
changing social conditions as I had found them.

Sku: traveller

THE LINE
Form a line!
Get in line!
From the time that I enlisted
And since Jerry armististed
I’ve been standing, kidding, cussing,
I’ve been waiting, fuming, fussing,
In a line.
I have stood in line in mud and slime and sleet,
With the dirty water oozing from my feet,
I have soaked and slid and slipped,
While my tacky slicker dripped,
And I wondered what they’d hand me out to eat.

Sku: iwastherewiththeyanks1

We good Americans – I say it without presumption
- are too apt to think that France is Paris, just as we
are accused of being too apt to think that Paris is the
celestial city. This is by no means the case, fortunately
for those persons who take an interest in modern
Gaul, and yet are still left vaguely unsatisfied by that
epitome of civilization which stretches from the Arc
de Triomphe to the Gymnase theatre. It had already
been intimated to the author of these light pages that
there are many good things in the _doux pays de France_
of which you get no hint in a walk between those
ornaments of the capital; but the truth had been revealed
only in quick-flashing glimpses, and he was
conscious of a desire to look it well in the face.

Sku: alittletourinfrance1

Powerful story in a 110 page novel that you can print out & enjoy. Only $1!

Marie Gessler, known as Marie Chaumontel, Jeanne d’Avrechy, the Countess
d’Aurillac, was German. Her father, who served through the
Franco-Prussian War, was a German spy. It was from her mother she
learned to speak French sufficiently well to satisfy even an Academician
and, among Parisians, to pass as one. Both her parents were dead. Before
they departed, knowing they could leave their daughter nothing save
their debts, they had had her trained as a nurse. But when they were
gone, Marie in the Berlin hospitals played politics, intrigued,
indiscriminately misused the appealing, violet eyes. There was a
scandal; several scandals. At the age of twenty-five she was dismissed
from the Municipal Hospital, and as now–save for the violet eyes–she
was without resources, as a _compagnon de voyage_ with a German doctor
she travelled to Monte Carlo. There she abandoned the doctor for Henri
Ravignac, a captain in the French Aviation Corps, who, when his leave
ended, escorted her to Paris.

110 pages of goodness!

Sku: somewhereinfrance1

Starting paragraph…
The traveller stood looking from the tap-room window of the Cauliflower at the falling rain. The village street below was empty, and everything was quiet with the exception of the garrulous old man smoking with much enjoyment on the settle behind him…

Sku: whitecat