Several of the men contracted
desperate colds, which clung to them for weeks. Davis was
chilled through, and said that of all the cold he had ever
experienced that which swept across the Maeedonian plain from
the Balkan highlands was the most penetrating. Even his heavy
clothing could not afford him adequate protection.
When he was settled in his own room in our hotel he installed
an oil-stove which burned beside him as he sat at his desk and
wrote his stories. The room was like an oven, but even then
he still complained of the cold.
When he left he gave us the stove, and when we left, some time
later, it was presented to one of our doctor friends out in a
British hospital, where I'm sure it is doing its best to thaw
the Balkan chill out of sick and wounded soldiers.
Davis was always up early, and his energy and interest were as
keen as a boy's. We had our meals together, sometimes in the
crowded and rather smart Bastasini's, but more often in the
maelstrom of humanity that nightly packed the Olympos Palace
restaurant. Davis, Shepherd, Hare, and I, with sometimes Mr.
and Mrs. John Bass, made up these parties, which, for a period
of about two weeks or so, were the most enjoyable daily events
of our lives.
Under the glaring lights of the restaurant, and surrounded by
British, French, Greek, and Serbian officers, German,
Austrian, and Bulgarian civilians, with a sprinkling of
American, English, and Scotch nurses and doctors, packed so
solidly in the huge, high-ceilinged room that the waiters
could barely pick their way among the tables, we hung for
hours over our dinners, and left only when the landlord and
his Austrian wife counted the day's receipts and paid the
waiters at the end of the evening.
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