poor," said she, "but for the American soldiers, would that I could do more!"

The villainous-looking individual in the fiery red vest who drove my taxi said there OUGHT to be a supplement, but inasmuch as I was going to see the saviors of France, the least HE could do was to refuse to take it.

He deposits me in front of the main entrance and I stand at the top of the steps to glance about the courtyard. A dust-covered ambulance is backing in slowly and carefully. carefully. The youthful driver jumps down and calls to some one inside the building, "Here's four more fer ye. What'll I do with 'em?"

Whoever is addressed sings back, "Can they walk?" And the answer comes, "I'll say they can't."

Behind this ambulance comes another, and behind that one comes a third, until I count nine all told. I ask the nurse beside me if she thinks I'll be in the way,

but she smiles and says, "Why, how absurd! This is only a handful."

A doctor steps up to supervise the unloading. From him I learn that never has the hospital been so crowded as now. It is supposed to care for one thousand, but three hundred extra beds have been added, and "if they keep coming we'll surely have to put them on the roof."

He points out the two great tents hastily erected on the terrace and says that the operating rooms have not been empty for three days and nights. Everybody is dead tired and consequently nervous that is, everybody but the soldiers. They're the best dead-game sports in the world.

"But come in and see for yourself," he adds.

A CONSTANT PROCESSION OF STRETCHERS

We pick our way through interminable hallways between what seem to be miles

of beds. On each is a suffering, bandaged boy. Sometimes it's hard to see the boy for the bandages. Occasionally, when the wound is in the spine, the poor invalid is lying face downward, strapped to a board. Even so, there is always the smile of thanks for the cigarette, the flower, or the magazine.

We pass an endless number of open doors, through which I see many more beds and many more boys. We stand close to the wall to allow a rubber-tired stretcher to be wheeled by. It stops before the operating room, and the one on it, in answer to my encouraging wave, throws me a kiss. There seems to be almost a constant procession of stretchers, for thirteen hundred wounded require countless dressings.

One husky lad in ambulance uniform walks at the head and another at the foot. All day long they lift their comrades, first from their beds to the litter, next onto the operating table, then back again into their beds. This is no easy task.

To do this work a man must be strong

and patient and very tender. And he always is all three. He will tell you that he would much prefer to be at the front, but since he has been placed here it is not for him to grumble. He will wipe the perspiration from his dripping forehead and absolutely refuse a box of smokes because he knows they're scarce and are intended for the "blesses." If the man on his stretcher is conscious he waits smilingly until the best-liked brand is selected from my supply. If the newly operated one is still in happy oblivion, he picks out what he thinks will please the sick one, promising to put it on the bedside table.

The soldier on the stretcher and the two at either end disappear around a corner, and three more come, and after them three more. It would all be most sickening if it weren't for the thought that these are the youngsters who stopped the rush on Paris, every one of whom will tell you that he wouldn't give up his experience. for a million dollars.

The third floor in this hospital is much.

the nicest. It is the sunniest, hence the cheeriest. The two Geographic wards are rather far down to one end, which makes them very quiet. And that, of course, is the best of all. There are twelve beds in each ward, and there is a battered and banged-up American soldier in each bed. It costs $600 a year to keep him there-clean, beautifully cared for, and well nourished. But that sum cannot pay for the flowers on the tables, the phonograph and its records, the oranges in the afternoon, and the all-too-seldom ice-cream treat. Oranges cost ten cents apiece, and as one kid put it, “One ain't hardly worth the trouble o' peelin'." That boy was full of fever.

ANOTHER GEOGRAPHIC WARD FOR THE "TIGER CATS"

I am told that both of these wards are nearly, but not quite, financed for this year, and that there's talk of the Geographic Society opening a third. If that should come to pass, it would mean that twelve more of what the Germans already term the "tiger cats," heroes of Chateau-Thierry, or some other point quite as bloody, would eat and sleep in cleanliness and live or die blessing each member.

"Hello, American!" calls out a musical voice. "Is it true that Washin'ton's gone dry? I gotta reason foh askin', 'cause that's my home town."

"Such being the case," I say, "I wonder if you noticed the sign above this door?"

"I reckon I did," he assures me. "When they rolled me up on the stretcher I kept repeatin' those words to myself: 'Donated by the National Geographic Society of Washin'ton, D. C.,' 'cause I had a feelin' I was goin' to get a shock when they shifted me onto this bed. I kept thinkin' how all the girls in our family had helped in the donatin', and I kept sayin' ovah an' ovah, 'It's a good hunch; you're gonna get well.' An' first thing I knew I was here in bed as pretty as you please. Thanks, lady; that's my fav'rite flower. What is it?"

Through the wide-open windows the bright health-giving sun pours into Geographic Ward No. 1. Here the men are all "on the mend," so that a visitor, espe

cially one bringing something to smoke, is mighty welcome.

FORTITUDE AND FRATERNITY

There is an air of real jollity, for the phonograph is blaring out that once popular melody, "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee," and even the boy in the wheeled chair is beating time with his one foot. When I can make myself heard I ask him if he'd like to have a flower. "Say, on the level," he chuckles, "what'd I do with it?"

I like him for that, just as I like the little pale one flat on his back on the bed in the corner. I can tell that he loves flowers from the way he handles the one I give him. He is very unhappy because some of the "guys" say he bawled all night. Well, if he did, it was because he was in such agony that half the time he didn't know he was doing it. This morning he found he'd chewed his handkerchief to rags, so they needn't say he hadn't TRIED to be quiet.

"That's all right," says a neighbor, "but if I'd a had something to flatten you out with I'd a flattened you out, you bet."

"You!" scoffs the pale one. "Maybe you don't know that I know it was YOU who got up outer bed, gave me the drink, and moved my leg three times."

THE BOY WHO DISCOVERED A SPY

"Got any chocolate?" begs one who is able to sit up in bed. He doesn't look more than seventeen, but insists that he'll be nineteen next Tuesday. He's got what he calls three "scratches," and throws back the covers to exhibit a leg bound up like a mummy. I can't help thinking that I'd hate to have "scratches" like his.

"But, gosh! it was worth it," asserts he. "If you'll stay with me a minute I'll tell you about it.

“I was a motor-cycle despatch bearer, so they let me carry a forty-five. I was pumping up a flat tire when I heard my captain talking to a man in French uniform. Now, you see, I know a lot o' GerAll of a sudden this bird gets tangled up in his French and begins to fill in with a few Kaiser words.

man.

"Ha, Ha!' says I to myself; 'so that's the little idea.' I went straight up to him. and I says, 'You're a spy, that's what

you are.' Just like that! And he never denied it, but started to beat it.

"The captain stood in the middle of the road, with his mouth wide open, as I started to run after the Dutchy. He could run some, let me tell you. When we got to the first turn there was a big military car painted just like a French one. What do you know about that? A man inside throws open the door, and then I got busy. Bing! BING! says I, and he went down like a lump o' dough.

"The fellow in the car jumped out, hauled him in, and the chauffeur started on high. The live one stood up in the back seat, and out o' three shots he made three hits. Whoopee! THIS is the life!"

HOW THE WAR "GETS" SOME

"Funny how this war 'gets you,'" soliloquizes a soldier young in years, but old in experience. "Why, when I was at home I couldn't watch my father kill a chicken. Now? Huh! Once I was racing along with some o' my pals, when we saw a mess o' squareheads hiding out in a ditch. 'All right,' says I. Take THAT fer the Lusitania, and THAT fer the Tuscania, and THAT and THAT and THAT fer them Belgium babies! And we threw every grenade we had with us."

The man from the north of Ireland, who hasn't been an American citizen very long, sighs and says, "Sure I like to lie here and think o' the sea." And the one who tells me he was born in Damascus and can speak seven languages compares his children to "bloomin' roses." red-faced fat boy yawns, "Oh fer a dip at old Coney," and a fourth asks the nurse if it's true that only seven died last night.

"PATCH ME UP QUICK, DOC"

The

send him away. Anyhow, he's SUCH a help. "But you ought to see him limp. when the major comes around!"

"Only one thing worries me," announces a faint voice from the nearest cot. "The top of my tin hat and the top of my nut sailed away together, and if they don't give me back that helmet I don't care what becomes of me."

"You ought to wear your soovneer 'round your neck, like I do," admonishes another. He boastfully shows us what's left of a button-really only the rim. His tunic was open when Mr. Bullet said, "Howdy!" "Pretty good work," says he. "But not good enough.'

From the pocket of what he calls his "kimona" a proud owner pulls out a piece of hard tack. In its center is a big chunk of shrapnel, and my attention is called to the fact that said hard tack is still intact. "And then they expect a TOOTH to crack it," he snorts.

THE GOLD-TOOTH SOUVENIR

"I seem to be the only unlucky one here," comes from an interested listener. He has black, curly hair and is so slight that his body is hardly outlined under the blankets. "When I left old Michigan I told my girl I'd bring her a souvenir that WAS a souvenir. 'None o' your old Dutch helmets for me,' says she. 'I want something o-ri-gi-nal.' 'You'll get it, sis; you'll get it,' says I. So, after I'd croaked my first I started in. He had the handsomest gold tooth you ever saw. And BEELEEVE ME! I worked. I pushed and I pulled and I twisted. And JUST when I thought I had it, I'll be doggoned if it didn't drop down the poor boob's neck."

"You unlucky?" demands an indignant bystander. "What do you think of me? First they made me a M. P., and I couldn't sleep nights for worrying about it.

But I got out of that all right, all right. How? Well, when it came time to do the arresting, I was hard to catch, that's all. So they dismissed me from the force."

Some one inquires if its true that bread is so scarce in Paris that you can be arrested for feeding crumbs to the birds. Another says whether it's true or not, America's good enough for him. As for France, well, all HE'S got to say about it

is that if the Lord came on earth a second time he'd find this country just like he left it.

"Oh, I don't know," chimes in a third. "Some parts of it ain't so bad. You take Ix the Pains (Aix les Bains), for instance. Some o' my comp'ny went there for 'leave' and they said it's just grand. You're met at the depot with a automobile and taken to the RIGHT hotel. Guv'ment car, of course. At night you put your shoes outside the door and next morning they're POLISHED. And you can have your breakfast in bed if you want it. Oh, la-la, la-la!"

"DOC, I'M YOUR MAN"

The two enormous, open-windowed tents are crowded to capacity, and dotted all about the wide immaculate terrace are

men in rolling chairs. Only one is in a bed, and the nurse stops before him because she wants me to meet the boy known to all the hospital as the finest soldier in any army.

"Tell her about yourself," she orders. "Why, there's nothing to tell," smiles Arthur, "except that I was wounded about a month and a half ago. They kept me in a French hospital until day before yesterday. They told me there was nothin' doin' as far as I was concerned. I said, 'You take me to some one that can talk my talk and then we'll see.' So they brought me here and the doctor looks me over and says the reason why they didn't cut was because the chunk of iron was too close to my heart, and so I couldn't stand to take ether. 'HOWEVER,' says he, 'if you're game