We still have no coal to speak of. I am burning wood in the salon--
and green wood at that. The big blaze--when I can get it--suits my
house better than the salamandre did. But I cannot get a temperature
above 42 Fahrenheit. I am used to sixty, and I remember you used to
find that too low in Paris. I blister my face, and freeze my back, just as
we used to in the old days of glorious October at the farm in New
Sharon, where my mother was born, and where I spent my summers
and part of the autumn in my school-days.

You might think it would be easy to get wood. It is not. The army
takes a lot of it, and those who, in ordinary winters, have wood to sell,
have to keep it for themselves this year. Père has cut down all the old
trees he could find--old prune trees, old apple trees, old chestnut
trees--and it is not the best of firewood. I hated to see even that done,
but he claimed that he wanted to clear a couple of pieces of land, and
I try to believe him. Did you ever burn green wood? If you have,
enough said!

Unluckily--since you expect me to write often--I am a creature of
habit.

I never could write as you can, with a pad on my knees, huddled over
the fire. I suppose that I could have acquired the habit if I had begun
my education at the Sorbonne, instead of polishing off there. I
remember when I first began to haunt that university, eighteen years
ago, how amazed I was to see the students huddled into a small
space with overcoats and hats on their knees, a note-book on top of
them, an ink-pot in one hand and a pen in the other, and, in spite of
obstacles, absorbed in the lecture. I used to wonder if they had ever
heard of "stylos," even while I understood, as I never had done