Connecticut western news., 1915-09-16

the gloom 10 shake. and uen nodded
 welcome and greeting all through that
 cheery brotherhood in the woods and
 in the fields.
 The voices and the wings were still busy after lunch when the car slipped past the tea houses in the drive and came into country where women and children worked among the crops. There were large raw shell holes by
 the waySiGe or in the piist of fields, and often cottage or villa had been smashed as q bonnet box is smashed by an umbrella. That must be part Of Beliars work. when he bellows so truculently among the hills to the north. We were looking for town that lived under the shell fire. The reg. ular road to if was reported unhealthy not that the women and children seemed to care. We took hyways of which certain exposed heights and cor ners were lightly blinded by wind brakes of dried treetops.
 Children Still There.
 Here the shell holes were rather thick on the ground. but the women and the children and the old men went on with their work with the cattle and the crops, and where house had been broken hy shells the rubbish was col. lected in a neat pile. and where n room or two still remained usable they were inhabited. and the tattered win. dow curtains tuttered as proudly as any flag.
 Time was when I used to denounco young France because it tried to Kill itself beneath my car wheels and the fat old women who crowded roads without warning and the especially deaf old men who slept in carts on the wrohg side of the road. Now 1 could take off my hat to every sing,o soul of them. But one cannot traverse d whole land bareheaded.
 The nearer we came to our town tho fewer were the people. till at last we halted in n well built suburb of paved streets, where there was no life at all n wrecked town. The stiffness was as terrible as the spread of the quick, busy weeds between the paving stones. The air smelled of pounded mortar and crushed stone. The sound. of foot ball echoed like the drop of n pebble in we'll. At first the horror of wreck ed apartment houses and big shops laid open makes one waste energy in an- ger It is not seemly that rooms should be torn out of the sides of buildings as one tears the soft heart out of Eng fish bread; that villa roofs should lio across iron gates of private garages or that drawing room. doors should flap alone and disconnected between the emptiness of twisted girders. The eye wearies of the repeated pattern that burst shells make on stone walls. as the mouth sickens of the taste of nor. tar and charred timber.
 One-quarter of the place had been shelled nearly level. The facades of the houses stood doorless, roohess and windowless, like stage scenery. This was near the cathedral, which Is al- ways q favorite mark for the heathen. They had gashed and stripped the sides of the cathedral itself, so that the birds flew in and out at will. They had smashed holes In the roof. knock ed huge cantles out of the buttresses and pitted and starred the paved square outside. They were at work, too. that very afternoon. though I do not think the cathedral was their ob- jective
 Kneel In Damaged Cathedral.
 For the moment we walked to and fro in the silence of the streets and beneath the whlrring wings overhead. Presently n young woman, keeping to the wall, crossed corner. An old wo. man opened n shutter. How fl jnrrcd and spoke to her. The silence closed again, but it seemed to me that heard n sound of singing, the sort of chant one hears in nightmare cities-of voices crying from underground fin the 
 'Nonsenser' said m officer. "who should be singing here"
 We circled the cathedral again and saw what pavement stones can do against their own city when shells jerk them upward. But there was singing, after all, on the other side of little door in the flank of the cathedral We looked in, doubling. and saw at least ! hundred folk, mostly women, who knelt before the altar of an unwreck- ad chapel. We withdrew quietly from that holy ground, and it was not only he eyes of the French officers that filled with tears. Then there came an old, old thing with prayer book in her hand pattering across the square. evil lently late for service.
 And who are these women?" lsked.
 Some are caretakers, people who nave still little shops here. There is Dne quarter where you can buy things. There are many old people too, who will not 20 away. They are of the place, you see"
 And this bombardment happens of- en?" said.
 Ut happens always. Would you like to look at the railway station? Of curse 1t has not been so bombarded as