456 



Sierra Club Bulletin 



miles away across the flat pine-shadowed country, the sharp peaks of 

 the Pyrenees." . . . 

 September 29, 1918. 



. . . "As I rounded the corner in front of the hotel I saw an Ameri- 

 can navy officer at the door. 'How much that looks like Homer Miller !' 

 I said to myself. And it was ! He'll never know how near he came to 

 being embraced, right there in the public square. How good it was to 

 see him, and how we did talk ! He had arrived in Mont de Marsan 

 shortly after noon, and, as he is probably the first naval officer who has 

 ever been here, he created quite a sensation. Homer said he had about 

 three French officers with him all afternoon, and he with about one 

 French word for each of them. I know what a strain it must have been 

 — I've talked with three French officers at once myself. He told every- 

 one he met that he was a friend of mine; so next day every one was 

 asking me who and what Homer was. Of course, I said he was an 

 admiral, or would be soon. Well, he departed on the morning train in 

 an aura of chocolate creams and ginger cookies, and I had the same 

 feeling of left-behindness that I had when Arthur Elston left Paris — 

 contrary-minded person that I am, for you couldn't pull me away from 

 France now with a pair of tongs ! 



"Our work has just about doubled during this last month. We have 

 opened our second office at Dax, where there are even more refugees 

 than at Mont de Marsan, and where they are even more miserable. They 

 are on the whole of a lower type than those of Mont de Marsan — drink 

 more, are dirtier and more generally worthless. We have grown very 

 fond of some of our refugees here. 



"I have had it in mind for some time to tell you some of their stories. 

 Pere and Mere Dudon come from near San Quentin. They are re- 

 patries, having lived nearly three years behind the German lines. I 

 think I told you that old Mere Dudon had fifteen children living at the 

 outbreak of the war. Three have been killed ; two she has lost track 

 of ; five are at the front ; five are prisoners in Germany. When I visited 

 the old couple first they were nearly starving. Mere Dudon had col- 

 lapsed on the doorstep of one of my French committee members, who 

 called her case to my attention. Their one room was scrupulously 

 clean. It had the usual hard slat bed and mattress of straw, a table of 

 rough boards with sawhorse legs, a bench, and two or three cooking 

 utensils. There was an open fireplace, where they cooked the little they 

 had. They were probably sending packages of food to their prisoner 

 children; otherwise, even with war prices, they would not have been 

 reduced to such bags of skin and bone. I gave them a stock of pro- 

 visions, and then the old man — they are both over seventy — ^begged me 

 to find him some work to do. . . . 



"It was not until I had grown to know them well that they told me 

 what poor old Mere Dudon had suffered at the Germans' hands. I 

 don't know what provoked it, but she is a spirited old thing and prob- 



