“Yes, I know Frank Wickoff in Oklahoma City—­knew him when he was poor as Job’s turkey, and then my folks used to borrow money at his bank.  Before we came to Oklahoma City we lived in Austin.  We ran the Good Luck, or was it the Fair; no, we ran the Fair in Dallas.”  At a quick look at her face from me she laughed and said:  “Oh, yes, I’m Jew all right.  No,” she returned to a query, “I never was in Wichita.  But when we moved to Blackwell we used to take the Beacon!”

“Henry, come here,” came the call from me.  “Here is old Subscriber and Constant Reader!” Then Henry came up and the subsequent proceedings interested me no more.  For Henry took the witness.  And the three of us, kicking our heels on the cement wall below us, sat swapping yarns about mutual friends in the Southwest.  It seems that in France the lady is a pedlar who goes from town to town on market day with notions and runs a little notion wagon through the country between times.  She told us of an air raid of the night before on St. Dizier where eleven people had been killed and urged us to stay for the funeral the next day.  It was to be a sight worth seeing.  Most of the dead were women and children.  There was nothing military in the little town but the two hotels that housed soldiers and their friends and relatives going to the front and coming back.  Yet the Germans had come, dropped a score of bombs on the town, then had flown away for another town, dropping their hateful eggs across country as they went.  Luneville had lost half a dozen, Fismes half a score, and other towns of the neighbourhood, accordingly—­all civilians, mostly women and children; and not a town raided had any military works or if it had a munition factory, the bombs had hit miles from the plants.

[Illustration:  Henry puffed on his dreadnaught pipe and left the lady from Oklahoma City to me]

We were beginning to realize slowly what a hell of torture and disease and suffering this war means to France.  Half a million tuberculars in her homes, spreading poison there; two million homeless refugees quartered beyond the war zone; millions of soldiers living in the homes fifty miles back from the line, every month bringing new men to these homes left by their comrades returning to the battle front; air raids by night slaying women and babies; commerce choked with the offering to the war god; soldiers filling the highways; food, clothing and munitions taking all the space upon the railroads; fuel almost prohibitively high; food scarce; and always talk of the war—­of nothing, absolutely nothing but the war and its horrors.  That France has held so long under this curse proves the miracle of her divine courage!  As we sat under the shrouded torches in the inn courtyard and considered what life really means to the men and women of St. Dizier, once more we wondered how we at home would react under the terrific punishment which these people are taking; what would Wichita do with her houses bombed,