them, feeling, perhaps, somewhat like a general publishing a manifesto to
his troops before a campaign. It was a great experiment, he said, in
which they were sharing; let them do their best to make the result a
happy one for themselves, and for the people among whom they had come.
They were "making history," for this experience was a wholly new one,
which might not impossibly prove helpful some day to others in like
circumstances.

It is pleasant to record that the appeal was not wasted.

At the dinner-hour to-day, the full numbers being now on the spot, the
resources of the commissariat were put to the test. Some anxiety was
relieved when the supply proved sufficient; it would have been small
cause for reproach if the caterers had failed in their estimate on the
first experiment. But of the commissariat we shall say more presently.

The secondary necessities of life, fire and light, were not forthcoming
with quite the same promptness. There was a twilight period in many
houses before lamps were furnished in sufficient abundance. The place of
fuel was supplied by the genial weather of the first week; and perhaps
few were aware of what we were doing without. Next week the east winds
and the coal arrived together.

The hotel laundry found the task it had undertaken beyond its strength.
No wonder. Three hundred sets of _articles de linge_ reach a figure of
which our hosts had hardly grasped the significance. We are sometimes
told that Gaels and Cymry cannot count. At any rate, when the bales of
linen came pouring in upon them, heaping every table and piling all the
floor, and still flowing in faster than room could be found, the
laundresses, brave workers though they were, felt that the game was lost: