"
They stopped over night in Chicago, and Mrs. Valentin bought some
shirt-waists; for the heat had "doubled up on them," as a Kansas farmer on
the train remarked.
Elsie trailed about the shops with her mother, not greatly interested in
shirt-waists or bargains in French underclothing.
The war pressure seemed to close in upon them as they left the mid-West and
drew toward the coast once more. The lists from El Caney were throbbing
over the wires, and the country, so long immune from peril and suffering,
was awakening to the cost of victory. There was a terrible flippancy in the
irrepressible spirit of trade which had seized upon the nation's emblems,
freshly consecrated in the blood of her sons, and was turning them to
commercial account,--advertising, in symbols of death and priceless
devotion, that ribbons or soap or candy were for sale. The flag was, so to
speak, dirt-cheap. You could wear it in a hatband or a necktie; you could
deface it, or tear it in two, in opening an envelope addressed to you by
your bootmaker.
Elsie cast hunted eyes on the bulletin boards. She knew by heart that first
list after Las Guasimas.
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