immediate hardships may be no greater.

The weather over here is very passable at present, but they say it is
simply hell off the coast in winter. However, somebody said the war will
be over in November. I hope the Kaiser and Hindenburg know it, too!


JULY 26.

[Sidenote: Anxious to be in action.]

I haven't done anything heroic, which irks me. We would like to get in
on the ground floor, while all hands are in a receptive mood, and before
the Plattsburgers and other such death-defying supermen make it too
common.


JULY 22.

[Sidenote: A cheerful letter from home.]

Your two letters of July 7 and 8 came this afternoon, but I got the
latter first and expected from what you said in contrition that there
was hot stuff--gas-attack followed by bayonet-work--in the former;
therefore I was all the more ashamed to find you had dealt so leniently
and squarely with me. Why didn't you come back with a long invoice of
troubles of your own, as 99 per cent of women would? Evidently you are
the one-per-cent woman. I bitterly regretted my whines after having
written them, for their very untruth. Alas, how many people think the
world is drab-colored and life a failure, and so have done or said