Dearest Mother:—

This day has been so eventful, so utterly new and remarkable to me, that I can’t bear to think of its being crowded out of my mind by the immediate to-morrows. These experiences in fact have been so remarkable and the after-dinner coffee so absolutely noir, that after a few hours of fitful slumber I seem to be done for the night. After I have described this place you will not wonder that ink is not provided, but you will forgive pencil, I hope (it’s the nice black one out of Father’s writing-case which I love so, and its maiden trip), although I know that writing in pencil holds a place with you alongside of messing the top bureau drawer and neglecting to wear a fully equipped sewing-bag always about the neck.

The last night on the steamer was thrilling. I stood way out on the bow with one of the Ambulance men (the nicest one) and watched the lights way off on the horizon grow brighter and brighter. We watched the pilot row out from the pilot ship in a little boat, and although the sea looked perfectly calm compared to what it had been, it was like climbing mountains in a hickory shell. All dark night everywhere with a few flickering lights and men calling hoarse things in French back and forth from the ships—can’t you see how weird it was?

It was too bad to go down the Gironde at night because they say it is a grand sight, but we were glad enough to wake up in Bordeaux. We got up at 5.30 and looked out on the wide flat river, the many boats, and the picturesque water’s edge of the harbor. We packed our last things, had a farewell tour de force with the femme de chambre, flew around saying good-bye to everybody, and then stood in line to see the prÉfet de police. Right here I want to say that of all the fairy tales that were told me, the ones about the difficulties of getting to Paris were the most fantastic. There were a good many tiresome details: I had to show our passports everywhere, but everything went smoothly, and every one was most polite. I wish I could tell you the thousand and one funny things that happened in leaving the boat. How we hated to leave that darling stateroom and the still darlinger Espagne. You know my penchant for everything Spanish, and I knew when I first heard that name at Bailey’s that it was the boat for me; and it was.

You remember the confusion and perfect riotousness of landing. I managed my own things, which in itself is no joke. I had to get my stuff together, have it examined, weighed, and checked, send my cable, and telegraph Miss Curtis, pay my excess, and buy my railroad ticket, find a carriage, and leave that dock. It sounds simple, but with a million people all hurrying to do it at once and nothing but rapid-fire French going on,—I got a few short circuits that were disastrous,—it was dreadful (but often very funny) and took nearly two hours.

The customs inspector was a woman and pleasant as anything. I never even unlocked my trunk and she just poked at my suitcases.

How can I describe Bordeaux as we saw it through that musty cab window? Low and little and picturesque. It was like stepping into a stereopticon picture and finding it alive. Little houses and shops, with bright signs all in French, and foreign-looking people in the streets, and many soldiers and many, many widows. Queer-painted carts and little houses and little narrow alleys with uneven houses, dark and aged, huddled together with lights over the doors—you know what I mean—adorable. The town itself is quite a place—good hotels and shops and cafÉs, with blue and red and yellow wicker chairs and tables on the sidewalk.

We piled our luggage in the lobby of the hotel and then filed into a dismal parlor and faced one another over a marble table (for ornament only). I was ready for bed and it was quarter of ten. The train for Paris left at one—three hours to wait and we so tired we couldn’t budge. How that parlor rocked and reeled after the steamer! Mrs. Bigelow said, “This is France.” It made me think of “As You Like It” where Rosalind and Celia and Touchstone arrive in the forest.

After I had slept a little, sitting bolt upright in the lobby, we walked about town. The little back streets were so tiny that only one could walk on the sidewalk at a time. Even Boston can go one better than that. I walked in the middle of the street and never felt bigger in my life. Miss Short sent a cable, and I went by myself into a little shop and bought a copy of the “Marseillaise”—my first venture in commerce, and I was mighty embarrassed because I don’t believe there is such a word as “copie” anyway, but I got it and was pleased to death to have actually achÈte-ed something.

It didn’t seem long until train-time, and we got into crowded but comfortable first-class carriages. After our elaborate good-byes, we found nearly every one from the steamer on the train, the Ambulance men and everybody. In our compartment there were a very fat French woman, a young girl, and her maid. The young girl—I had planned to spend hours in describing her, but I can’t stop now. I’ll just say she was Elsie Ferguson in “The Strange Woman,” and let you picture her. The prettiest, most charming, and warmest creature I ever met. It was the first time I had heard a girl speak high French. There were no French women on the boat, you remember, and it was like music. The country we passed was the prettiest I’ve ever seen, more perfect than England even. So many poplars, and hills,—and such houses. There were acres of vineyards and lovely farms and with autumn foliage,—fainter than ours, of course,—lovely yellows and reds, and leaves dropping, and blue mists and more poplars, it was like a dream-land.

It was a long trip, but the steamer people visited back and forth and bought things at the stations and stood in the corridors and talked, and it didn’t seem long. The fat French woman joined our conversation after the French girl got out at Poitiers—I must tell you that she is married and her husband is an officer and has just recovered from being badly wounded. She is going to find out on Sunday if he has to go back, because, you see, he’ll never be strong again, and she is praying that he’ll be rÉformÉ for good. Oh, she does seem to love him so. If he isn’t rÉformÉ he’ll have to go back to the front. She is so brave and so beautiful!

Well, after she got out, a nice old Frenchman got in and a typical Englishman (who spoke French) and we had the most wonderful time. Of course we didn’t speak at first, but the fat woman and I would say things across the compartment to one another and they would offer a remark now and then, until we all got to talking. I shall have to write some of these things down, I fancy. I’d hate to forget them. I thanked Heaven for the 'steenth time for my French, which is a bruised reed, right enough, but a perfect joy just the same.

I was expecting to fall into Miss Curtis’s arms, but it would have been an empty fall, for she wasn’t there. I didn’t know, when I wired her, that there were two stations, so I suppose she didn’t know which to choose. I could have gone with Mrs. Bigelow and the others, but I thought Miss Curtis would have engaged a room for me here, so I wanted to try this place, anyway. One of the Ambulance men, Mr. Baxter, offered to bring me here and see me installed. There were no taxis left, and it was still drizzling, and you know my luggage,—the eleventh hour Altman winter flannels boiling out of the carryall with price-marks dangling and soiled from constant exposure,—and me tired and dirty with the ship still going round in my head, standing alone by a dark and empty cabstand at 10.30 p.m. in Paris, the unknown. The others all rattled off, and Mr. Baxter disappeared to find a taxi, and I sidled up behind a big French soldier for comfort. I saw the fat French woman to say good-bye and thanked her for being so bien gentille to me. I told her that “elle m’avait fait senter la bien venue en France,” which was rotten French, and she said, “Mais Mlle. est si aimable.” I could have hugged her, and I felt as though she were a great big mother, twice, three times, your size, Mother.

Mr. Baxter manufactured a taxi out of nothing and we bundled in the bag and baggage without any idea how far our place was from the Quai d’Orsai. It was nice to be on terra-cotta—to be in a place where you don’t have to show your birth certificate before you can order an egg, as he said. The only thing that any one has told me that’s true is that Paris is dark. I don’t see how the taxi-men can drive at all. We rattled along, and finally came to a street that looked like a tunnel—a faint light at the other end—that’s all. At the very blackest point we stopped, the driver said, “C’est l’hÔtel,” and by the light of a match we could see a black sign with gold letters beside a door that looked like the door of a stable, saying that, indeed, it was HÔtel des St. PÈres—but oh, so dark. It looked as though Louis Treize’s sub-valet de chambre had boarded it up and gone away and that no one had ever been there since. We knocked and knocked, and after ages we heard a shuffling step and the great black doors swung open. There stood the sleepiest, wall-eyed person, almost entirely covered by a big spotted butcher’s apron. I asked in uncertain tones if they had place for Miss Root, and he shook his head and I asked if he knew Miss Curtis, and he said no, and then I asked if I could get a room. It was the most awful-looking place. I didn’t know just what to do. He made for a dark flight of stairs,—the janitor, I mean,—and I started to follow him. I asked Mr. Baxter if he supposed the janitor was a concierge, and he told me that jardiniÈre was the nearest he could get to it. Upstairs we went on dark-red carpet, past maroon walls—up and up and up. Very high ceilings and long black corridors. Finally he opened a room on the fourth floor, and it looked clean, and I said I’d stay. I went down to get my things and to thank Mr. Baxter for being so kind. I should have been so forlorn all alone. So he drove off to the Ambulance Headquarters. I could hear the taxi going off down the street and the “jardiniÈre” tumbling over my bags. I do think American men are wonderful!

We climbed again to this eyrie and he wished me “bon soir.” Again I was so glad for French because, as he was turning down my bed,—I told him that “je viens de venir d’AmÉrique,” and that I did not wish “que l’on me rÉveille.” He was quite genial and said good-night all over again.

My room is the queerest of the queer. There is a worn red carpet with rainbow figures, the paper is green and yellow striped—mild, but incontestably green and yellow. The ceiling is slanted and I have one dormer window. There is a marble mantelpiece and a huge bed; also a marble washstand, which I feel must be a bit of ornamentation looted from Napoleon’s tomb. I looked out of the window, but it’s perfectly black. There may be a blank wall six inches away, or a court or a forest of trees or almost anything for all I can see. I stood in the middle of the room with my hands on my hips and looked around and smiled. There was my own fur coat which is Northampton to me, and my black sweater which is Bailey’s, and my suitcases and myself—all of us dropped into this garret room.

When I went to lay my weary—oh, so weary—bones between the sheets, I found the latter to be fashioned apparently out of heavy canvas. It was like nestling down between two jibs of the good swordfisher, “Edmund Black.” The pillow is enormous and uncompromising—my own little baby pillow Mrs. Bigelow put in her trunk for me. Still, as I describe them, they look very good to me and I think I’ll go back to them. It is getting light, I think, and pouring rain, I’ll try looking out again.

I have seen it! I have seen it! Paris is the most romantic place in the world. Talk about London! Oh, I never shall forget this afternoon. I went to sleep almost before I stopped writing the above in pencil and never woke up until twelve o’clock. I asked the femme de chambre whether or not any one had called for me, thinking Miss Curtis might have tried to find me, and she said that I had had two telephone calls, and that a young gentleman had been here in a taxi. It was Mr. Baxter, of course, because he said he would take me back to the Quai d’Orsay and help me with my trunk and customs and prefect of police; and there, they’d told him that I was asleep, and not to be waked up! I felt hopeless at the thought of having to go by myself without any idea of what to do! I suppose Mrs. Bigelow may have called me up. I had no idea of Miss Curtis’s whereabouts and I knew that the Shurtleffs are at their headquarters all day long and I had no idea where that was, and I knew that Mrs. Bigelow was at the other end of Paris and couldn’t help me even if I did see her.

I didn’t feel like lunch, so I took the map of Paris and went out in the dripping streets with no umbrella. I was so confused and so embarrassed with my map, which I didn’t dare open; I felt that people were staring at me, and my rubbers and umbrella were in my trunk and my coat and hat and feet were soaking. I just wandered along and finally came to a taxi. I decided to go to Mrs. Shurtleff’s house, whether she was in or not. So I said, 6 Place Denfert-Rochereau, and got out at a big apartment house. I walked in, and there was no elevator boy or telephone girl or anything, so I rang at the first apartment and asked for Dr. Shurtleff. The maid said he wasn’t there, and I asked if she could tell what apartment he lived in and she said she didn’t know; finally her face lighted up and she showed me into a little parlor and said, “You come for a consultation! I’ll go and get the doctor.” Heavens and earth, I’d stumbled into a physician’s office. I said, “No, no!” and went out. I thought I’d have to ring at all the apartments to find the Shurtleffs, but I found a concierge, tremendously en nÉgligÉ, who pointed to a little elevator and said, “third floor.” I got in expecting to be followed, but bang went the doors without apparently word or sign from any one and up I shot. Up and up; and I was scared to death. I felt sure I was going through the roof; but eventually we stopped and I got out and rang at the first bell to the left, as I’d been told. No answer; I rang and rang; still no answer. I gathered that they were at the headquarters, so I sat down on the top step of the stair and wrote on the back of my visiting card that I was at the HÔtel des St. PÈres. I was a little discouraged, because it meant that I would have to wait at the hotel until some one could call or write. In the mean time the lift was standing inert and I couldn’t make it go down—of course, I wouldn’t have gone down in it myself for the gross receipts. I could hear people ringing wildly down below and pretty soon a man came leaping up the stairs. I asked in my prettiest French if he could make the thing go down, and he couldn’t any more than I. He started to go into an opposite apartment, and as the door opened I heard some one greet him in English. I jumped up; it was the first English I’d heard since the others had left me. I rushed forward and almost put my foot in the door, for I was desperate. I asked the woman who had spoken, one of the most beautiful women I ever saw, if she knew where Dr. Shurtleff lived. She said, “I am Mrs. Shurtleff. Why, you must be Miss Root.” And she threw both her arms around me and pulled me into their living-room. There were Miss Curtis and Dr. Shurtleff and a blazing wood-fire. If that wasn’t heaven on earth to me, I should be ungrateful to admit it. We talked and talked, and oh, but I was glad to see them! They never had received my telegram and the Espagne had not been announced in Paris, the concierge had directed me to the wrong apartment, but now everything was straightened out. It just happened that they were taking an afternoon off, the Shurtleffs, that is; the others left very soon. I hadn’t had anything to eat since on the train the night before, and I felt weak and horrid, and everything still rocked; so Mrs. Shurtleff gave me hot tea and nut bread and cold chicken, and warmed me through and through. She is an angel; she looks like one of the old Gibson drawings,—beautiful, and so charming and enthusiastic, and much younger, too, than I had thought, with light-brown hair and blue eyes and pink cheeks.