Friday, May 28, 1920

This morning we go to look for the grave [of] Lafayette. After a long ride and search we found it in such an out of the way place, with nothing to indicate that a cemetery lay behind those convent walls. An old fashioned grave, with a flat grave stone. Upon it was a wreath in bronze, with this autographic inscription “To this great Lafayette from a fellow servant of liberty, Woodrow Wilson” The parents of Lafayette and other members of the family also are buried here, and some family connections.

We went to a church on one of the highest points of Paris to get the view, but were five minutes too late to go up in the tower.

After lunch we packed and then went to the Magazin De Louvre, the largest store in Paris and finished my shopping. To-morrow we start for America and I will not be able to see one thing I was quite anxious to see, and that was the weaving of tapestry. We had hoped to visit the Gobelin weavers, but there is not time. Mrs. Richard recited the poem once since we came beginning -

“Let us take to our hearts a lesson - no lesson can braver be -

From the ways of the tapestry weavers on the other side of the sea.

Above their heads the pattern hangs, the study it with care;

The while their fingers deftly move, their eyes are fastened there.

They tell this curious thing besides of the patient plodding weaver

He works on the wrong side evermore, but works for the right side ever.

It is only when the weaving stops, and the web is loosed and turned

That he sees his real handiwork, that his marvelous skill has learned.

At the sight of its delicate beauty, how it pays him for all his cost!

No rarer, daintier work than his was ever done by the frost.

Then the master bringeth him golden hire, and giveth him praise as well,

And how happy the heart of the weaver, no tongue but his own can tell.

The years of man are the looms of God, let down from the place of the sun,

Therein we are weaving ever, till the mystic web is done.

Weaving blindly, but weaving surely, each for himself his fate -

We may not see how the right side looks, we can only weave and wait.

But looking above for the pattern, no weaver hath need to fear,

Only let him look clear into heaven, the Perfect Pattern is there.”