uniform, and even more the fact that you are not asked, but expected, to
do your duty. So I came back quite unruffled across battered trenches
and silent mounds to write this letter to you.

My dear father, I'm over thirty, and yet just as much a little boy as
ever. I still feel overwhelmingly dependent on your good opinion and
love. I'm glad that they are black days when you have no letters from
me. I love to think of the rush to the door when the postman rings and
the excited shouting up the stairs, "Quick, one from Con."


February 2nd.

You see by the writing how tired I was when I reached this point. It's
nearly twenty-four hours later and again night. The gramophone is
playing an air from _La Tosca_ to which the guns beat out a bass
accompaniment. I close my eyes and picture the many times I have heard
the (probably) German orchestras of Broadway Joy Palaces play that same
music. How incongruous that I should be listening to it here and under
these circumstances! It must have been listened to so often by gay
crowds in the beauty places of the world. A romantic picture grows up in
my mind of a blue night, the laughter of youth in evening dress, lamps
twinkling through trees, far off the velvety shadow of water and
mountains, and as a voice to it all, that air from _La Tosca_. I can
believe that the silent people near by raise themselves up in their
snow-beds to listen, each one recalling some ecstatic moment before the
dream of life was shattered.

There's a picture in the Pantheon at Paris, I remember; I believe it's
called _To Glory_. One sees all the armies of the ages charging out of