3

"That can never happen again" she said. Well no, I don't think it will.

There was one amusing thing about the call which proved how little
mere words mean to people. When they had examined the house the Colonel
said "You don't actually mean to tell me that you sleep here quite a-
lone?" I assumed him that I did. "Well," he exclaimed, "I hope to heaven
you have got a good revolver". I reminded him that I was still in the
military zone and that our entire department had been disarmed on Sep-
tember 2, 1914, and that consequently there was no a rifle or a revolver
in the commune. "Do you mean to tell me that when the Germans were near
you you had actually no weapon to defend yourself?," and I had actually
to remind him what happened to civilians with arms in this war,--and he
is a soldier. It was a new proof to me of how little words mean to most
people. I hope you will see the comic in the situation as I did.

I got the paper with the Cezanne-Vellard stuff, and laughed heartily--
only I am afraid that I did not laugh out of the correct side of my mouth.
I did enjoy it all the same.

I am sorry that you did not see Theodore and Margaret. I should have
liked to have news of them, and I have heard nothing since the letter
written the day then got news of Noel's death. I am afraid it was a
tough blow for Theodore.

We are in real winter here. It snowed day before yesterday, but of
course no snow stayed on the ground. It is pretty cold but I am now clai-
mated and feeling the results of the year and a half on the hilltop. The
temperature of the library where I am writing is only 54° F., and fleet
and hends are warm--so much for a sane life on my hilltop. My old French
teacher, Marie Fournaise, was out for Sunday, and as she is terribly
frilleuse I had to have extra fires all over the house. She was comfort-
able and cosy, but I nearly suffocated, and ran round the house in cotton
frocks all the three days she was here.

Is this letter long enough for you?--and of by the way, your letter
reached me via le censor at Dieppe, on Nov 16--a greating on my 62d
birthday. Thanks!!

La Creste, Huiry,

Couilly, S et M.,

January 23, 1917.

My dear old Henry:

I am sorry you have been what you call "down and out".
Perhaps before this you and up and doing again. It takes so long in these
days for letters to get back and forward that one can change his skin
and his very soul between letters. But really it ought not to have hurt
you to "flock all by yourself" in the country a little while. Don't you
worry. I'm rather clairvoyant about some things, and I reckon that you
could not disguise yourself in any humour through which I could not see
to find the you I like.

But really you ought to be over here doing something for the good cause,
since our damned president--who would be impeached if I were a man or
two with a vote in my native land-- does not see his way to saving the
country. Really, dear boy, you'd love it on the hilltop just now. It is
too picturesque for words. You see during the winter operations, at-
tending the spring offensive, the crack dragons have been dismounted
to hold the first line trenches, and spare the infantry. The 6th and 23rd
dragons are in the trenches in the Foret de Laigue, between Noyon and
Soissons, and as their horses disturbed operations so near the firing
lines, instead of getting a week in the first lines trenches, and a
week arrière, they get three weeks in the trenches and three weeks out,
and they take their repos here. We have 2000 horses housed in all the
stables and outbuildings in the commune--Amelie has eight chez elle--
and 500 men come out to care for them. Along the valley from Nanteuil
to Bouleurs there 2000 men, and nearly ten thousand horses.

Every three weeks there is relève, and one half of the men here escort
the other half to Meaux, and lead back the riderless horses, and the
men left at Meaux take the train to within five miles of the trenches,
wait for night, and march in under the cover of darkness, and the men
they relieve march out, and are met at Meaux by the horses. Then the

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repeat, and read all the books of new instructions issued from the
Quartier generale of the Etat-major, removed, by the way, from Chantilly
to Beauvais. In fact, I am very much alive, thank you.

By the way, what has become of your pretty cousin, Mrs. Peats? You wrote me that she was to be married again. Did she do it? In August I wrote her a letter, but I had no reply. It was not important, only if you remember the story she told us that day you were here--as we were driving up the hill--you probably recognized that that tale suggested to me the cadre for my second book. I wanted to tell her that, before the book came out, although I had merely made use of a suggestion--that was what I wrote her. I wanted to send her a copy of the book, but as I did not hear from her--well I did not.

Of course you saw Seumas' great poem--"Spring in Dublin-1916"? And
perhaps you know that Gertrude has joined up, and is going to drive a
car for one of the American Relief units? Alice goes on the seat with her
as "groom". The last I heard the car was ready, and they were soon to
start.

I don't think that I have any other news that I can write. But don't you let your temperament get away with you. Still IF you CAN'T help write s just the same,

LA CRESTE, HUIRY

COUILLY (S.ETM.)
COUILLY-ST GERMAIN

July 24, 1917.

My dear Henri;

I was rejoiced to get any kind of a line from you. I was begin-
to ask myself if YOU were going to turn up at the gate soon in a "uniform quel-
conque". Sorry you wont. No I did NOT see Gertrude on you in Vanity Fair. Do
send it AT ONCE. Also send along you Pumpelly--if he wears a uniform he may
come in, but if he tries to pump me I'll shall call out the local fire de-
partment. I'd like to do that as I have never seen the communal pompiers. I
know there is such a thing as there is a wooden box about six feet square
at the foot of the hill with "Pompiers" printed on the door. Unless I find
some occasion to call them out I shall evidently never see them.

I suppose by this time you know that I have been rash enough to utter opus
In due time you will get a copy. I mention it simply because the book will
tell you everything that has happened to me, and saves me the trouble of tel-
ling the story over.

At present I am nothing but a farmer. Last winter I got into a very bad
state of health as the result of insufficient PROPER food. It was a terrible
winter. I never saw anything like it in France. No one was prepared for it. Ev-
erything froze. From the first of February to May we had absolutely no green
food of any kind. Potatoes and everything of that sort froze. So this year I
have not only set up a kitchen garden of my own, I have gone into chicken
raising, and I have pushed poor old Abélard to such planting as he has not
done for years. Luckily we had soldiers here in the early spring, and the army
was so interested and so willing to help. They let me have two big horses and
four men to do the ploughing, and I ploughed up everywhere. In my own garden
beside the house I have onions and tomatoes and cucumbers, and in my bigger
garden up the hill at the corner I have all sorts of beans, and peas, carrots
parsnips, beets, potatoes and GREEN CORN, if you please. I have a big field
of grain for my beasties, and all this in addition to Pére's big gar-

den and two big fields of potatoes and beans down on the south side of the hill. You ought to see my flower garden now. It is not yet really fine, but it is a different thing from what it was when you saw it. There isn't a weed in it. The hedge is all choice clipped and think, and it is really tidy. I've only roses in front of the house, and the two big beds up the hillside are full of geraniums, zinnias, poppies, anemones, marygolds, larkspur and things like that, and there are sweet peas climbing the grillage and lines of wonderful dahlias all around the edge. The little plot which was so full of weeds-- where you raked--there are NO weeds now--has tall rose bushes, and there is a screen of hug red and yellow sunflowers to shut off the little vegetable garden. It is going to be nicer-- much nicer-- some day. But it takes time and hard work. I'm burned and freckled to a degree that is most unbecoming, --and what is worse it does not come off in the winter. My skin is too thin to adapt itself to country life, and it did not occur to me to take precautions--now it is too late. But who cares?

I know you are hearing all Gertrude's exploits! Isn't it fine?

Now your news, if you please.

influence to get permission almost at once to go out to the front and
visit his son's grave, and take the little family--mother, wife and
four years old daughter, with him. They fished up the grave, and coming
back in baking his papers out of his pocket he dropped his card case
with 1500¢ in it, and never discovered the loss until the train had
started. It was all the ready money they had in the world, as he had
drawn everything not knowing how much he would need. Do you know--he
and his wife both laughed. It did not touch them anywhere. They came
home--Mme Mathis had a little in her purse - sold the piano, their
best armoire and a few things like that, advertised the house "for sale"
-they built it and fixed it up so that they boy could have a summer
home when they were gone. It means nothing to them now. Neither of
them will live long. Add world and strange war when one stops to close
over it and sees the details. But one mustn't do that, and I try not
to.

Did it ever strike you-but of course it has-how beastly it would
sound to unfinished people, if people who thought were to begin to put
their naked thoughts into undressed words? Funny thing this LIFE.

You see what a scrappy mood I am in.

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is still offended and makes no sign. He seems to be having a huge success
still. They were in Ireland two or three weeks--it was during the last
visit the Stephens family made to Paris, and they had Shamus' Dublin ap-
partment--free of all charge--met all the Irish notables. Theodore medal-
lioned Yeats, Gogarty, AE, and others. I don't whether he did Michael Col-
lins or not--but he met him. And by the way before Ireland's first great les-
son in democracy--submission to the will of the majority-is learned --she
will have few big men left. The assassination of Collins ought to do much to
stop the civil war, but I suppose it will not. No other man was so much
loved by both sides. However --where's the use of talking about it. I'm
not Irish--not entitled to an opinion. Besides I'm entering my 70th year in
November, and doubt if opinions are becoming to three score and ten The
only characteristic which persists in me is--procrastination. I am a won-
der at that.

Life here runs on smoothly---the Hilltop is ancient history--no one comes
any more,--except now and then an old friend. Margaret Anglin and Howard
gave me a surprise party at ten o'clock one Monday morning early in july--
came sliding down to the gate in an auto--caught me a cap and apron, picking
peas in the garden. They only stayed an hour--not even for lunch. They had
arrived from Greece the night before, and left for London the next day, where
she expected to take a three weeks' rest cure somewhere in Devon. She
did not achieve it, as, on reaching London, she received a cable from her
brother that her mother had had a bad fall, and was lying at the hospital
in Ottawa in a serious condition, so they returned to the
States at once.

I don't know if you remember Eleanor Heitcamp? If you do, she has gone and
got married to a nice Boston chap--very modern and up to date in his i-
dees-but serious and fine--a professor in a vocational school in Boston.
That sounds more "high brow" than he is.

I wish you see the garden this year. It is really lovely. Do you remember
that you asked me once why I did not have a tobacco plant? Well I have a
big bed of them-all colors-under the library window beside the dining
room door, and another by the upper road. Every one says that they do
smell beautifully. Alas! I cannot smell them. I have utterly lost the
sense of smell-the result of the illnesses I had in the spring of 1921. At
that time it was only temporary, I thought, of course, it would come back.
But that year violets bloomed, and I did not spell them: lilac time came--no
odor for me: then the beds of heliotrope that Gertrude loved so, bloomed in
the beds against the front of the house. No odor for me. Then I consoled
myself with "Next spring I will spell them"-but I did not. Of course Ger-
trude consoled me with saying "If you must spare a sense that is the ea-
siest to do without." Of course it is. Only I little care to do without any
of my senses. I am getting deaf. My hearing is no longer fine. I do not hear

3

the clock tick, and I do not hear much --or rather do not hear distinctly-if I cannot see the speaker's face--and some people's voices are a blur. Old age is not a pretty thing, is it?

The garden is a mass of petunias of all sorts and colors, of the most beautiful reine margarites, all colors and all sizes--single and double--there are roses and dahlias, fox gloves and snapdragons, and everywhere deep borders of Indian pinks.

Yet, in spite of giving exactly as I want to--and in nothing desiring to change it if I could--I am depressed by the need of exerting myself to live it an age when a woman is no longer mentally--or any other way--productive. You can judge of the State of my nerves by the fact that I cannot strike a key straight?

Josephine Tozier has gone off to Venice to visit her soi-disant sister-in-law, the widow of her brother&in-law. I envy no one Venice in August. I hate a mustique as much as I do a fly. Never mind that I can't spell.

It is a beautiful autumn day here--if only such days could last. But winter is coming, and every year I find it harder to bear.

And you? Tell me something about yourself. Where are you--how is your health--and your courage?

LA CRESTE, HUIRY

QUINCY-SÉGY (S.ET M.)

COUILLY-ST GERMAIN

July 30, 1926.

Dearest Henri;

I might easily say that I was "heart-broken" if my heart were not so tough, and if I had not had a deep blessure in it all these weeks that I have known that you were in Paris--and yet you never made a sign. Gertrude told me that you were there. I would not ask a single question--had no idea where you were. If you did not tell me yourself, I would not know. I have a little pride. If you please--more now perhaps than I used to have. I imagined that you were probably not well--but did hope every day to have a word of some sort from you. Of course I forgive you--I never cherish any resentment toward the friends I love--but I am awfully sorry not to have seen you--I always think at my age that each time may be the last, and I had so many things I wanted to talk to you about--things that it is not easy to write about.

Your Wednesday letter being addressed to Couilly instead of Quincy did not reach me until this morning--Friday--or I could have wired my forgiveness. At least let me know that you get across with some degree of comfort. That ameliorated steerage business seems to anything but the proper way for YOU to travel. It may be all right for the emthisiasm of your youth in good health, but for you with a colitis which has pulled you down periodically for some years ? Well not just the thing. I hate lost opportunities--and this is surely one--I only hope we may have the luck to meet again--Much love to you. Since I could not see you I wish you had gone to Battle Creek and taken a cure.

I am not sure that I should have written today if the foreign postage