ten steps to dig the cakes of mud off my sabots. I take up a good bit
of my landed property at every step. So I can guess, at least, what it
must be out in the trenches. This highly cultivated, well-fertilized
French soil has its inconveniences in a country where the ground
rarely freezes as it does in New England.

Also I am very cold.

When I came out here I found that the coal dealer was willing to
deliver coal to me once a week. I had a long, covered box along the
wall of the kitchen which held an ample supply of coal for the week.
The system had two advantages--it enabled me to do my trading in
the commune, which I liked, and it relieved Amélie from having to
carry heavy hods of coal in all weathers from the grange outside. But,
alas, the railroad communications being cut--no coal! I had big wood
enough to take me through the first weeks, and have some still, but it
will hardly last me to Christmas--nor does the open fire heat the
house as the salamandre did. But it is wartime, and I must not
complain--yet.

You accuse me in your last letter of being flippant in what seems to
you tragic circumstances. I am sorry that I make that impression on
you. I am not a bit flippant. I can only advise you to come over here,
and live a little in this atmosphere, and see how you would feel. I am
afraid that no amount of imagining what one will or will not do
prepares one to know what one will really do face to face with such
actualities as I live amongst. I must confess that had I had anyone
dear to me here, anyone for whose safety or moral courage I was--or
imagined I was--responsible (for, after all, we are responsible for no
one), my frame of mind and perhaps my acts might have been