semi-summer-resort hotel at home--Ridgefield, Conn., for instance,
in winter time.

The making of cognac occupies nearly every one, one way or another, and
it has made the place next to the richest town of its size in France.
They make the cognac, and they make the bottles for it in a glass
factory on a hill overlooking the town--about as airy and pleasant a
place for a factory as one could imagine. The molten glass is poured
into moulds, the moulds closed--psst! a stream of compressed air turned
in, the bottles blown, and there you are--a score or so of them turned
out every minute. As we came out of the furnace-room into the chilly
afternoon a regiment of reservists tramped in from a practise march in
the country. Some were young fellows, wearing uniforms for the first
time, apparently; some looked like convalescents drafted back into the
army. They took one road and we another, and half an hour later swung
down the main street of Cognac behind a chorus of shrilling bugles. All
over France, south of Paris, they must be marching like this these
frosty afternoons.

Coming up from Bordeaux the other night we missed the regular connection
and had to spend the night at Saintes. The tall, quizzical, rather grim
old landlady of the neat little Hotel de la Gare--characteristic of that
rugged France which tourists who only see a few streets in Paris know
little about--was plainly puzzled. There we were, two able-bodied men,
and P------, saying nothing about being consul, merely remarked that he
lived in Cognac. "In Cognac!" the old woman repeated, looking from one
to the other, and then added, as one putting an unanswerable question:
"But you are not soldiers?"

We went out for a walk in the frosty air before turning in. There was