tall poplars that their colors will soon be gayer.

As the shadows fall, no guard comes as in England to pull your curtain
down according to military orders; and, as you approach Paris, you see
families dining by uncurtained windows in blazing light. You are
astonished after your London experience of semi-darkness to find the
boulevards ablaze and no apparent fear of aerial enemies or
sky-invasion, although aeroplanes and Zeppelins and bombs may be flying
and fighting only eighty miles away. Now and then a searchlight
illumines the heavens, but even searchlights are far less conspicuous
than in London. In January the lights were ordered to be lowered; but
Paris will not stand for long London fog, gloom, or darkness. The
French atmosphere and life demand light.

Paris is gradually getting accustomed to the situation. More than 30
first-class hotels are partially opened and advertising. Many of the
business streets have a semi-Sunday appearance. Boulevards running
from the Place de l'Opéra are well filled with people, and nearly all
of the stores are now open. In the first weeks of December you could
see the reopening day by day, and when on the 10th the government
returned to Paris, the art stores and the jewelry stores joined with
the confectioners, trunk dealers, and book-men, and threw open shutters
that had been closed four months.

Paris is now normal but not crowded. Theaters are reopening, but the
restaurants must be closed at ten P.M. The inhabitants young and old
picnic in the Bois de Boulogne and evince most interest in the defences
about the Paris gates,--the moats, the new trenches that have been dug,
and the tree-trunks that have been thrown down with their branches and
tops pointing outward as though to interrupt the progress of an enemy.