Outside on the platform were a few of the Red Cross and Y.M.C.A. men of our ship, and I learned from them that one of their number had suffered a sadder fate than I. He had tried to get by on a Holland passport, viséed at the French consulate in New York, and been quietly but firmly persuaded to take the next boat back home.

I shared a compartment on the train with a native of the Bronx, and a French lady who just couldn’t make her eyes behave, and two bored-looking French gentlemen of past middle age, not to mention in detail much more baggage than there was room for. The lady and the two gentlemen wore gloves, which made the Bronxite and me feel very bourgeois.

Our train crew, with the possible exception of the engineer and fireman whom I didn’t see, was female, and, thinking I might some time require the services of the porter, I looked in my dictionary for the feminine of George.