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The Living Present by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
page 17 of 271 (06%)
not, so that she is obliged to call on her committee (who have a
hundred other demands) or pay the deficit out of her own pocket. A
certain number of American contributors send her things regularly
through Mrs. Allen or Mrs. Willard, and occasionally some generous
outsider gives her a donation. I was told that the Greek Colony in
Paris had been most generous; and while I was there she published in
one of the newspapers an appeal for a hundred pillows for a hospital
in which she was interested, and received in the course of the next
three days over four hundred.


IV


I went with her one day to one of the éclopé stations and to the Dépôt
des Isolés, outside of Paris, to help her distribute comfort
packages--which, by the way, covered the top of the automobile and
were piled so high inside that we disposed ourselves with some
difficulty. These packages, all neatly tied, and of varying sizes,
were in the nature of surprise bags of an extremely practical order.
Tobacco, pipes, cigarettes, chocolate, toothbrushes, soap,
pocket-knives, combs, safety-pins, handkerchiefs, needles-and-thread,
buttons, pocket mirrors, post-cards, pencils, are a few of the
articles I recall. The members of the Committee meet at her house
twice a week to do up the bundles, and her servants, also, do a great
deal of the practical work.

It was a long drive through Paris and to the dépôts beyond. A year
before we should have been held up at the point of the bayonet every
few yards, but in 1916 we rolled on unhindered. Paris is no longer in
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