Page:Christian Science War Time Activities.djvu/328

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IN THE WAR

whites, constitute a big part of their living. Nettie Mayo Bergman, for instance, had a tiny baby, another only a year old, yet she donated two pairs for some stricken little ones. Old Grandma Pitka, who speaks no English, and who takes care of a paralytic husband and a little grandson, sent me word that no one had asked her to make moccasins, but she wanted to help if it was not too late. So her donation is with the others.

“Always the Indians have had things given to them and done for them, and I never saw them so happy as they are now, learning that they can help someone else.”

With the moccasins came a group picture of the women and children who had made them. After both had been exhibited in the window of the Boston headquarters, the moccasins were carefully sewed into a box and forwarded, with the photograph, to France.

The spontaneity of the whole field again necessitated larger headquarters in Boston. The sales department, together with the knitting machines, moved to 460 Boylston Street, while one whole floor of a large automobile building on Beacon Street became the wholesale house of supply, and the scene of great activity. Despite the prevailing scarcity of wool, sufficient quantities were obtained by the Comforts Forwarding Committee to supply not only the workers in the immediate vicinity, but to answer the calls from all over the field. Blankets for convalescent robes, as handsome as market ever produced, were purchased, and sold to the various units to be made. Countless bolts of khaki eider down were bought for the making of sweater vests, “the finest garment ever put out by any organization,” according to some of the army officers. Indeed the quantity of materials

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