Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1919 — LITTLE FRENCH CAPTIVE HERE [ARTICLE]

LITTLE FRENCH CAPTIVE HERE

SUBJECT OF NEWSPAPER GLARE ARRIVES IN RENSSELAER—AND HOME. From Paris, to New York, to Chicago, to Rensselaer—and home! Such has bee nthe traveling experience of pretty little Mrs. Samuel O. Duvall, formerly Miss Lanra Benoist, of Paris and Noyon, France, during the past few weeks, who arrived in this city with her mother-in-law, Mrs. John Duvall, Monday evening. These weeks have been filled with strange and wonderous sights for the little French maiden who has been forced to face a battery of newspaper cameras half way across the continent and to grant interviews to nagging newspaper correspondents hourly. Paris is her native city, New York was wonderful to her, Chicago offered many things, new and novel, but Rensselaer proved the greatest attraction of all; it’s to be her new home, you know and it was with a sigh of relief that she stepped from the train here Monday evening. “Oh, it is perfectly wonderful!” she exclaimed with only (the slightest trace of French accent showing in her speech, her jet black eyes dancing with delight as she saw the little city that is to be her future home. “All America is wonderful, and I am so glad-to be away from the terrible roar of the guns and where it is quiet and where one is not reminded of war constantly—but these American newspaper men are almost as bad,” she added coyly, “but I suppose they “will be not so much in the way when they forget about me. “This is an awfully nice little place,” she continued, “and I know that I shall like it very much, and when Mr. Duvall comes I know that I will meet so many people and have such good times, and I want to, for I know that sometimes I shall get to thinking of my native country and maybe get a little homesick.” Thus did the demure little French girl, who was a prisoner of the Huns for thirty long months express her first impression of America and the little city which is to become her -home. - Of course, Rensselaer people need no introduction to Mrs. Duvall, for all week they have been confronted with feature writ-ups by metropolitan scribes of the Duvalls, and almost every paper worth while has seen fit to print the photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Duvall.. Perhaps one of these days when Mrs. Duvall ceases to grow weary of newspaper scribes she will grant us an interview and tell us of some of the experiences she underwent during the thirty months she was a captive of the Germans at Noyon—and then we’ll tell you more about her.