March 21, On the Orient Express in Oars I'Sit, leaving in an hour for 
Vienna, Ton see I got this train on time, Here you wait in the 
train instead of in a waiting room. It was raining again when I 
w»t transferred to the lighter at Cherbourg. It was very easy going 
through the custom house. A Cook ©an, directed :i@ where to get noney 
changed, how to get to the station, etc. It was too late to get to 
Paris in time for the train for the Sast that night, unfortunately, 
ws were due at Cherbourg early in the morning, but it was after three 
in the afternoon. The journey through IJOrmndy was beautiful. 
The country is something like northern Illinois, but many times wetter. 
There were the same flooded prairies and muddy barnyards 1 have seen 
in Illinois in early spring, but the p art of the landscape due to nan 
was very different. The low stone houses with tiled roofs covered 
with mess, the walled gardens with trees trained en the walls, and 
especially the trees pruned to a single stem, now bearing new twigs 
and aelicate spring foliage their entire length formed pictures' very 
different from anything 1 had ever seen, The orchard trees were cov- 
ered with lichens and there was ivy everywhere. Many places looked 
like living Corot pictures. It was raining, but the rain se cried to 
belong to that kind of landscape and only added to the beauty. It was 
dark all too soon. It was about midnight when we reached Paris. 
There was n© Cook man at the train, so a woaan who had been on the 
America and was on the train suggested we get a rooo at a hotel to- 
gether to sake it cheaper. She was a buyer for wholesale houses and 
knew n arls. She had talked to ue a let about the Lord, when I wanted 
ay nind free to enjoy lovely Slowindy, and she had a book the title of 
which was French for Science and Health , se I dreaded being bored, But 
I acceded, mid we got a room at —hold your breath— Le Grand Hotel on 
Place d© 1' Opera, just the ay they do in the Berlits books we studied. 
It was If for th two of us, so it wasn't quits so terrible as I feared. 
