Page:Christian Science War Time Activities.djvu/202

 a great favor you have done the boys who have had to stop at this camp.

“ ‘Usually Casuals are in anything but a pleasant frame of mind and the very word “Casual Camp” is a bugbear to them. But thanks to your efforts in getting the many things for furnishing the Rest Room here, many thousands of boys have had a pleasant place to write letters, papers and magazines to read, a piano to play and a nice fireplace with a bully fire to gaze at and perhaps see visions of their homes back in the dear old U. S. A.

“ ‘I take great pleasure in thanking you for a kind and unselfish service rendered to the men of the A. E. F. who have had the benefits of your devotion to a good cause.’

“We had a wonderful time at Christmas. There were several boys who were artists and decorators, and they took great pleasure in the decoration of our rooms. Down at the Casual Barracks we had a big Christmas tree and holly wreaths. There was a dinner for the boys who came through that day and the Y. M. C. A. gave them each a package.

“In the Reading Room the decorations were lovely. We made long ropes of boxwood and hung it in festoons through the middle of the room. We fashioned two large wreaths of the same for the side walls. In the front windows we hung large wreaths of holly; the best one of all we put over our picture of The Mother Church. It was very difficult to get holly—no one had any—but the old Frenchwoman, in the house where I lived in the summer time, gave me all the holly from one tree which was in the garden. In this way there was enough to make wreaths for the two rooms, our Reading Room and the one at the Casual Barracks. We had a big basket of it on the piano and some on the tables, and we kept up a blazing fire in the fireplace and everyone who came in exclaimed over the beauty of it all.

“Some of the boys asked me if they might invite some of the other men at the barracks up to the room for New Year's Eve, as they were lonely and had no other place to go. Of