AS I sit at the window of my cosy pied-a-terre, four hundred and fifty.feet from the ground in the Whangdoodle Building, gazing out at the marvelous map of Manhattan spread below me; the wedge-shaped patch of roofs and towers embraced by two silver arms of the sea, bathed in sunlight and the whole town looking remarkably tubbed and scrubbed on the bright end-of-the-year morning, I cannot but marvel at the exhilarating metamorphosis which has come over us all since that memorable day only a few weeks ago when the whistles blew!

If it were not that my case is typical, I should not venture to mention it, but, after all, great events can only be described in terms of the individual. Wherefore, let us suppose that I am not me, but simply Type A or B, pointed at with a stick by Professor Bumpus, who is lecturing on Mob Psychology.

"Let us consider Type A," the Professor would say, "and let us, by Type A, designate the average professional man whose modest pre-war income has shrunk to the immodest level of his borrowing capacity; a point so low as to be unmentionable. You see him now sitting at his window in the Whangdoodle Building wondering whether to jump out to-day or to-morrow. He has bought Liberty Bonds with his dollars, Thrift Stamps with his quarters, War-work buttons with his dimes, and now, mournfully chinking seven cents and an ancient Roman pocket piece in his jeans, he asks himself whether the end will be a survival of the fittest or of the fattest."

SUCH indeed is a true picture of Type A in the dark days before the whistles blew.

I suppose that practically every, able-bodied male in the United States who had not already donned khaki or blue was considering, six weeks ago, that a commission of some sort was about his only hope. The family?—well, yes, that was a problem. If Aunt Lucy or Uncle Luther didn't come across with an ante-mortem settlement the state would have to provide, that's all. A great many patrii familiae did take the final jump and went scuttling off to Zachary Taylor or Newport News, while the countryside resounded to the bang of closing homes and the wails of wives and little ones being deported to unpopular relatives, whose groans greatly augmented the chorus. There was a pooling of laws and in-laws that hadn't been seen since the day of the wedding; the only difference being that there were no presents and everybody said what he or she really thought.

Members of the Type A group were seen coming out of smart haberdasheries—lieutenants in droves, numerous captains and even an occasional major, as painfully conscious of his gold leaves as Adam must have been when he wore the first one, of fig.

AND the ladies, bless them, were all in a ferment in those closing hours of the world conflict. Tender, young, unmarried females who had never dreamed of leaving the home-nest were suddenly inspired to get across the ocean by hook or by crook; callous cynics who had consistently looked askance at a knitting-machine were beginning to wonder what sort of uniform would be most becoming,—if any,—countless documents were filed and the post-office staggered under the mass of character letters, loyalty letters and what not.

I myself sat, on that dark morning of November 7 th, taking stock of the future. Before me lay two blank applications waiting to be filled out. One of them outlined the requirements necessary to become second-lieutenant in the carrier-pigeon ground-school; the other described alluringly the greasy joys of a mechanic in the motor transport. On either side of them, forming an almost perfect balance, lay two pockets, the right-hand one containing my life insurance policy and my Liberty Bonds, while on the left, in a neat file, reposed my accounts payable. With trembling hand I picked up the pigeon-paper and looked for the dotted line.

And then the whistles blew!

NO, reader, I did not suddenly leap up and cry, "The pigeons be damned!" or anything so volcanic. No, I wrote calmly on, filling out line after line, racking my brains to think of my mother's middle name, looking absently at my watch and saying to myself— "O, yes, twelve o'clock," and continuing at my task.

And still the whistles blew. And then, slowly, so slowly, the consciousness crept over me that something tremendous had happened. I pulled out my watch again, this time with a snap of decision. Quarter past twelve—and the whistles! O, those glorious whistles! It was a growing uproar, a deep-toned crescendo that sent chills up and down my spine and made my back hair rise. With my face buried in my hands I sat and shivered, groping, searching, trying to realize it all. And outside rose the mighty flood that carried my soul away with it, a flood made up of wailing sirens, and barytone factory voices, raucous motors, bellowing transports, sharp-stabbing stationary engines and, underneath them, the confused, far-away sound of excited shouts. Hurried footsteps were rushing past my door in the outer corridor and confused voices were babbling a jargon in which only one word was distinguishable—Peace!

YES .... it had come. What if it was but a rehearsal, the result of a bungled bit of mis-information It was essentially true. And I, well—after that first sacred moment, in which every mingled emotion joined with the mighty chorus outside in a heart-breaking prayer of thanksgiving,—I experienced that second inspiring sensation, in which 1 soon found I was not alone, namely, an overweening thirst.

As ancient volumes say, let us draw a veil over what followed. The hiatus between the first and second acts of the great double-bill was a dim, head-achey hyphen entirely surrounded by joy.The entire town was mad with it. I saw only one squabble. It was during Act I, when twelve outraged citizens fell upon a small individual, who said the glorious news was not true.

But, you say, this is a history. Granted, but, as the old lady of classic story said, I love to talk about it. And more than that, has it not wrought a revolution in more senses than one ? The whole background of life is changed.

From the moment Type A slammed down his roll-top and rushed for the elevator, after carefully shaking his bills-payable out of the window into the loveliest November snow-storm known in the annals of the street-cleaning department, hasn't the world been a brighter and better place to live in?

AND what an unscrambling of eggs there has been. Special trains have been pulling out of Zachary Taylor loaded to the guards with potential Colonels and Generals who had not had even time to chip the shell. I suppose Maeterlinck will picture them in some beautiful drama as a crowd of unborn officers, and get away with it. I can only think of the reunited families, of little ones draping the house with holly and mistletoe pending father's return, of wives saying excitedly, 'Here he comes," and of in-laws crooning to each other, "There she goes."

Verily, we are facing a reconstruction period. It's the very latest and newest thing, but I feel that we can face it with a new courage and confidence. To some, perhaps, Peace brought a certain sense of disappointment, a purely personal sentiment voiced by the young Lieutenant who made his first appearance in his new uniform, only to get the glad tidings of the armistice, and who remarked bitterly, "We had a nice war, and now look at it!" Let him be of good cheer. He and the other fledglings who have gone so swiftly back into private life have one great consolation, or even two. They did what they could, and in the future when anyone suggests a costume party they need never question, "What shall I go as"? In fact, the tried and true Pierrot slip-on bids fair to become a back number.

IN a few families, too, there has been a certain dark side to the silver cloud. A few husbands and wives of my acquaintance were just settling down for the first time in years to be perfectly happy,—apart. And they were chalking it all up to patriotism at that. It's too bad—but of course, as Foch said to old Dr. Solf—you can't please everybody, and these little domestic problems must be merged in the great work of reconstruction.

Our problems have not vanished, but somehow they all seem different. That's what I thought when I first looked out of my window this morning, over our bright and, "may I not" say, intelligent city. It was ten o'clock then and it's nearly eleven now! My, my, I must open my mail—hello, the same old bills—but somehow even they look different! Yes, by jove,—they are different; there is more writing at the bottom of them.

Well, I can't throw them out of the window to-day, but I herewith formally register a prayer that the world in general, and myself in particular, may never cease to remember the high hope and joy and courage with which we faced all the winds that blow, and to which we cast all our troubles that glorious morning when the whistles blew.