PARIS, July 20th, 1915.

DEAR VIOLET,

I am worrying all the time about the expensiveness of the furniture, because I know that you will contrast it with the Italian rococo rotundo risplendo business, and you will find that your graceful Louis Seize is "higher and fewer." Well, I can't help it. If you cut off diplomatic relations, perhaps you'll cut off antiquity relations too. Chi lo sa?

I saw a very touching thing the other day in the Madeleine, where I went to Mass. A woman no longer young, in the heaviest of crape, came in and sat down and buried her face in her hands. She shook with suppressed sobs and terrible weeping. Presently there came in another worshipper, a stranger to her, and sat down by her side. He was a splendid-looking officer in full-dress uniform---a young man, with a wedding-ring upon his hand---one of those permissionaires home, evidently, for the short eight days that all the officers are given now---a hiatus between the old war and the new. He bent too, praying; but the weeping of the woman at his side evidently tore his heart. Presently she lifted her face and wiped her eyes, and the officer put his hand on hers. And as I was sitting near, I heard what he said:

"Pauvre madame, pauvre madame! Ma mère pleure comme vous."

She glanced at him, then bent again in prayer. But when she had finished, before she left her seat, I heard her say to him:

"Monsieur, j'ai beaucoup prié pour vous. Sachez que vous avez les prières d'une vieille mère à laquelle ne reste rien au monde."

He touched her hand again and said:

"Merci, madame. Adieu!"

It was an intensely touching picture in the dimly lighted church, full of worshippers, one can never forget these things.

I went yesterday to see the aerodrome at Le Bourget, where the Nieuports lay along the ground like wasps, waiting to fly and sting. I would give anything in the world to be a soldier taking part in the trenches.

Coal is now a dollar a sack, and in the shops, one by one, everything is growing rarer. I bought batiste de linon one day at three francs a yard, and the following day it was ten, and only a few pieces at that! Safety pins can't be had.

I received a cable last night from Bessie, saying that they sail on the 12th August by the Patria, and asking me to meet her in Italy, which I can make no plans to do, as Mother's health is very wavering.

With the idea of going into the next apartment---into that new and untried place that, like the girl said about sickly Italian love music, "I hate it, and I love it"---I conceived the notion of asking my old landlord to let me take with me the boutons de porte. I wanted these door handles, that have been turned and turned for years by the hands of those I love. I simply couldn't bear to think of those little brass knobs, that I have kept polished by the greatest effort in memory of the past, should fall under the vulgar fingers of other people, who would not even keep them clean. Strange, but true, the proprietor has consented.

Of course the kingdom of one's mind is a very great possession, but even in it one can't take the full amount of satisfaction unless one feels that all its capabilities and its possibilities are developed to the full. And even in these pathways of the intellect and of the spirit, it is possible and easy to go astray. It is not an easy thing to decide what ways are best or most complete.

My last few winters in America have developed in me the strongest Americanism, and the active life of New York---I don't mean the rushing up and down Fifth Avenue in a motor, or lunching at the Colony Club, but the consciousness of that network represented to me by Sixth Avenue and the publishers' offices, that getting into direct touch with the mechanism that has made my successes, that coming into contact with active business life ---is fascinating to me, and indeed has been for years part, as you know, of my existence. And then, being able, in a few moments, to come in contact with the people who are dearest and most sympathetic to me is, very naturally, a great thing in my life.

I close---not because I haven't anything more to say!

4, PLACE DU PALAIS BOURBON, PARIS.

MY DEAR FRIENDS,

I don't want to change my home without letting you all know of the fact.

Can you realise that you will none of you ever see again little old 4, Place du Palais Bourbon, with its memories, sad and lovely, its charm, the pretty little study, and the rest?

To Violet it has a very real entity, and I hope some sweetness still. I never shall forget the day when she dragged me by the hair of my head up against a three years' lease at which I baulked and almost died. I never thought that we would be able to pay that rent. I expected to be sold up at the Drouot for back rent and taxes! I expected every horror that a woman making her living under difficult circumstances could fear. But Violet's optimism, Violet's courage---and, above all, Violet's wish to make a home with me, to build this little high-swinging nest with some one she loved---to have a home of her own-were stronger than my fears; and together, very slowly and unostentatiously, we made what has been such a charming entourage. She loved it with all her heart. And I have loved it even more. I have learnt priceless and wonderful lessons here; I've had great and deep experiences. There is a charm about it, and a beauty that nothing else can ever give to me in the way of a home.

Here I have seen France rock on her foundations. Here I have watched with her, wept with her, and believed in her victory.

For many reasons I am not sorry to go.

You all remember No. 6, upstairs. We have all seen it together. Now it is free. On Monday---always a lucky day for me---I sign the lease. I shall have a long, irregular parlour, on the walls of which is a lovely old red brocade, antique, with pretty red taffeta curtains; and on the floor a wonderful Savonnerie Aubusson carpet. That's the foundation of my new drawing-room. Of course it will be easy for you to imagine that I have not presented myself with this beauty; and easy, too, to imagine that, like everything else that I possess, it has been a gift of love.

The long room at the back is going to be a bedroom with a bath; and there's another bedroom and bath, a beautiful ante-chamber, a big dining-room, a study which will recall the old, a lovely bedroom for me with dressing-room and bath, a kitchen big enough to prepare the fatted calf in, four servants' rooms, an elevator, and a bully pair of concierges, who, I hope, will stand guardian to me for a new and successful future.

It is a bold step. I can ask my married friends to visit me; I can give any one who comes a room and bath and a room for their maid; so there won't be any excuse now for turning down my hospitality, and those who are fat and weak in the legs won't have to walk upstairs.

Out of the windows I see all the beauty I have loved so long; but I am above it---still higher---and the view is wider, wonderful. Far over to the left rises the lily-like spectre of the Sacré Coeur. It is too, too beautiful for words.

I was delighted to find that all my curtains fit, and, of course, I have more than enough furniture to begin with. The place will be repainted, with the chauffage and the bathrooms in, by October, and I hope I shall rent my old place by then.

Quite apart from anything else, I couldn't stand the stairs any more. I used to stay out because I simply couldn't come home and climb them. And when, over and over again, Mme. de S. came to the door and couldn't come up, and Mother came to the door and couldn't come up, and when I, when I did come up, was alone, I finally broke the spell. Now I have enlarged my horizon, and. I can open hospitable doors.

When I came over here this time, I lay in my bed on these wonderful summer mornings and watched the little shadows of the Golden People crossing the ceiling, and I said: "Now, I am going to sit here and see who cares enough for me to come. And whoever does, and whatever golden person crosses my life now, is going to come in and make it, and I shall open the door." I stood at the window of the study and looked out at the lonely, lonely streets, crossing which no vehicle came any more bringing me guests whose sweet presence made the happiness of my life; and I said: "The day will dawn surely when some one will break through this lonely barrier and come."

It is only two months ago---not quite that---and when I first got here the restlessness was terrible. I wanted to make Mother comfortable and rush back to New York. I wanted to go anywhere, away from this cruel solitude, where the very echoes made me weep. And then---a transformation occurred in me, and something changed. For the first time in my life, I have been content to wait, to do nothing, to wander about the little house in a sincere peace, to arrange my things with pleasure; and I have loved it as never before.

Don't think that this is illogical and paradoxical, because I am shedding the shell like a chrysalis. Remember I am only going next door. The Place du Palais Bourbon is mine still---but I've gone up higher.

With deep love to all the Golden People,

PARIS, Aug. 3rd, 1915.

MY DEAR MARY,

You can't think how glad I am that fate has given you the trip across the continent, and the change of scene and rest that it must all mean to you. Of course I should have loved to have seen you here, and in many ways the experience would have been wonderful for you. On the other hand, I dare say that America offers, in many ways, a greater stimulus just now.

Here, for the civilians, things are calm. Forain has added to his fame and made himself more immortal than ever by his wonderful cartoon at the beginning of the war: A poilu (common soldier), filthy, ragged, saying: "Pourvu que les civiles tiennent!" It has become an epoch-making dessin.

Artist that you are, you would have revelled in the beauty I have seen, in the pictures that I have seen. True artist that you are---one of the truest I know---how you would have responded to everything! My dear, it is for this reason, perhaps, that I write you to-day---sure, across these thousands and thousands of miles, of your responsive sympathy.

One after another of these semi-detached midsummer streets I have rolled over, in and out and through, in a little yellow-wheeled victoria, driven by a toothless and agreeable old coachman, buying on all sides furniture for Violet, for two months now. The work has been so absorbing, I have taken it so seriously, that it has crowded out my own work entirely and made me a semimaniac. Antique furniture buying is a vice, there's no doubt about it. All absorption in any one thing is a vice. And I begin now to understand why collectors die poor and why collections are sold. But I speak of this in order to speak again of the wonderful, wonderful streets, here in this wonderful city. How well you know them, too

Mysterious, vocal, fascinating, and to-day appealing and pathetic. All around the patient, cleanly industry continues. Filth and dirt you almost never see anywhere. Indeed, here and there are lines of starving and fatherless, waiting en queue before the doors of the different civil charities. The children seem more than ever beautiful: barelegged, with little white shoes and stockings, the little girls are too sweet for words; but one's eyes follow now more tenderly the little boys, the little sons of France, coming up to replace those who have given their lives as flowers are given. And it seems as if the mothers hold them more closely, lead them more needlessly by the hand---these little sons.

Uniforms everywhere, of course---sky-blue, pale and faded by the trenches. You see a man with three decorations across his breast---the Legion of Honour, Military Medal, Croix de Guerre---and you wonder what wonderful bravery this simple-faced, quiet-eyed man has been inspired to. Three stalwart chaps will limp along there, down by the Rue Bonaparte toward the quais---three men with only three legs between them. This you see everywhere; and the bandages over the eyes of the totally blind.

Let me give you, who love pictures, these: Up on the Rue Tournon, a very low old window, up in a very old house---one of those extremely compressed entresol windows with latticed panes; the window half open, and on the left, in an earthen jar, of snowy and crimson flox---nothing else. Another: Out here, back of my house, little maison de rapport. One June twilight, I saw a little dressmaker sitting in the window, her pure profile sharp against the darkness of the room behind her, dressed in a little camisole as classic as though it had belonged to Charlotte Corday. Across the window-sill a soldier's coat of blue. By her side, in a common pitcher, was a great bunch of Madonna lilies. She was sitting dreaming---wondering, no doubt, if the next passing of the postman would bring her one of those stampless cards from the trenches. . . . 

The pictures are many: they are countless. I could not begin, my dear Mary, to tell you half of them; but I wish indeed that you were here to see. When one has time to think of it, the constant effort all about, and on every side, the vividness and liveness of that living and vibrant cordon humain which has stretched nearly six hundred miles, is electrifying beyond words. How real it makes real things seem! How glorious it makes real love seem! For nothing could hold against the force of that steel machine and against the irony and the iron of forty years of plan and plot, and an intent and design to possess and to kill, but Love ... the love of wife and child, and lover and home, the love of country. The hands that are pressed against the invader now are the hands of those who for nearly half a century have been making for peace. Therefore, they are not mailed. They are flesh and blood. They are the fine and delicate hands of the poets, the artists, the men of thought and of spirit, the hands of the industrials, of those who have been making fine and beautiful things, whilst the Germans were making shot and shell. These hands seem to be a very hedge of defence, mutely calling upon God to bless them. So, with me, see them pressed against the invader to force him out of the devastated lands. Is it strange, as we look, that they almost seem to us to bear the glorified stigmata? . . . So, as I think of the power of love, it seems more than ever greater than anything else in the world; and in this way you may look upon this as a spiritual war, in the face of which peace is ignoble, and only effort is divine . . . . I do not think that any love, however unfulfilled, is in vain. I cannot believe it any longer at the close of this strange, terrible and beautiful year. My heart has gone out so constantly to those robbed of their beloved by death. They are all around me, everywhere-known and unknown. And my heart, too, goes out so deeply to those who, as it is called, love in vain, though there is no such thing. To be able to love at all is so marvellous that no matter what suffering it brings, life is only worth living through that agony, through that passion, through that poignant, ever-demanding pain. Pity those who cannot love, not those who do, no matter whether they lose or gain.

I am sure---I know---that you understand me as perhaps no one else can.

Everything has dignity through this---everything has a raison d'être through this. Only by this is anything ever created and made. 1 understand so well that great, far-reaching demand and cry for the satisfaction of the need, for the response and for the answer; but even in the face of complete renunciation, in the face of inevitable loss, in the face of what we all call failure and renunciation, I say again: Love completely and call yourself only happy when you can.

Write me a line and think of me, as I know you always do.

As ever,

PARIS, August 4th, 1915.

MY DEAR FREDERICK,

I have not quite understood about the war souvenirs. I have ordered to be bought for you all the notices publicly-posted in the streets since the day of mobilisation, and have already received thirteen, costing ten francs apiece. It will be quite a pacquet of documents, if I can get them all. Some of the souvenirs are very interesting ones, and I am going to send them by the American Express: I hope to be able to get you a copy of the Mobilisation Order, but they are hard to get, and very scarce. I heard that Von Schoen, the ex-German Ambassador here, got one through some one at the American Embassy, and had to pay frs. 6000 for it! Another man paid frs. 1500, but there is just a chance that I may be able to get one for about sixty francs---under a hundred, anyway.

Your mother is remarkably well and walked from her house nearly here the other day.

Things aren't half as had as they seem to you it America, because you get the German "news." The stories of bravery and devotion are legion. One fine little woman who had married a hairdresser and was only used to homely, feminine duties, took on his shop when he went to the front, learned the business, so that now she is a capable little shopkeeper and hairdresser, and said speaking of her husband on the firing line: "Oh, I've long given up wondering how he will home---whether whole or maimed. Now I only say, When he comes back, if he comes back. it doesn't matter how. I can work for him and take care of him All I ask is that he may return." This is the magnificent spirit of all the women.

4, PLACE DU PALAIS BOURBON,
PARIS, Aug. 1915.

DEAR ANNE,

It is a long time since I had your letter. I think of you very often, although I have been silent. Your presence is everywhere in the place where only last year I grew to know you for the first time.

You can't think how impressive it is to be a city that is almost deserted. When I tell you that one day I drove from the Trocadero to the Pont Alexandre, on a Sunday afternoon, without meeting a single vehicle, it will give you an idea of the desolateness of these streets. And the crowd, too, is such a peculiar one---all the men old or frail-looking. One wonders where the singular inhabitants who have suddenly appeared upon the scene keep themselves in normal times.

Wandering about alone, as I have been doing a great deal lately, I have gone into many of the churches and prayed at the different shrines, and it is impressive to see the character of those who come in to pray. Men who can never kneel again; men who sit with bandaged eyes before the lighted altars, for whom all the visions of the world have been blotted out for ever; the poor women in their little shawls; women in their crape veils; the man going to the Front; the man who has come back from it, never to take an active part in life again: and the women who ask the Mother of Sorrows to remember theirs. This morning I went to St. Etienne du Mont just before noon. Around the tomb of Saint Genevieve were burning several very high candles. The woman told me they would burn for four days, and I lit one in memory of the patron saint of Paris and left it standing high and white, spiritual and beautiful, in the corner of the dark old church.

The sacredness of Paris now blends with its beauty, and the city itself seems to keep-in absence of millions of feet who used to tread its streets, in absence of the heavy, noisy vehicles that are doing their duty as transports, in absence of all the tourist and stranger throngs that never were of it-Paris seems to have gone back into the dim past, expressed by these relics that remain: the churches, the Louvre, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the tumble-down streets; and the whole atmosphere of the place, as I have seen it this summer, has been one of the most sympathetic and charming things that you could possibly imagine.

My mother was eighty-one years of age yesterday. She celebrated it by walking up the three flights of stairs to my apartment, to see one or two of the lovely bits of furniture that I have been buying. Last year she was a refugee in England; this year she is revelling in her little home, spared to her because of England's help.

A very agreeable Abbé dined with me last night. He told me that he was giving absolution to one dying German boy---only sixteen---on the field, and he put his hand under the boy's head and lifted it, and the boy, who was delirious, simply said: "Mama, mama, mama!" And the Abbé said to me: "It is a very curious thing, but in all the dying appeals I have ever heard, it is always for the mother." That return, perhaps, to the lost childhood---the call just before going to sleep. . . . 

You speak to me about your summer being an unsatisfactory one. I am inclined to think that it can't be that, knowing you. Wherever you are, you have done good and splendid things, vivifying and inspiring and encouraging those near you. I scarcely know of any presence more stimulating, more impelling to action, and I envy those who have had the pleasure of your sweet companionship.

To-night is one of the nights of full harvest moon. The skies have been so marvellous lately, thickly sown with summer stars, and it is an impossible thing to those who have not seen those dreadful and distant fields to imagine the horror that is going on so near these cities which that constant, magnificent courage, that limitless sacrifice, protect.

One day when I was giving electricity lately at the Ambulance, a poor little Zouave hobbled in---he had only one leg left---and held up a maimed hand for me to treat. He was not a 'very interesting-looking specimen-rather sullen and discouraged, I thought---but as I looked at his frail little body and his disfigured hand, I looked at his breast too. Three medals were on it---the Legion of Honour, the Croix de Guerre, and the Médaille Militaire---all a man can get! And he was just a little soldier of Africa---a nondescript man whose name would only be heard at other times to be forgotten.

Jacquemin.

"Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait pour mériter tout cela, mon ami?"

Pour mériter tout cela, parbleu! He has one leg only, one hand only, and he has back of him eight months of hospital and eight months of horror, for his sufferings have been beyond words.

Jacquemin!

Oh, his name is pretty well known now in a certain Sector!

"Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait pour mériter tout cela ?"

Three medals across that narrow chest!

Well, alone, on a bad night, in storm and rain, he was a volunteer patrol. Alone, he brought in four German prisoners. He was a volunteer for six patrouilles of the gravest danger---not always alone, but always fetching in prisoners and more prisoners. Bad for the Germans. He carried his superior officer, wounded, out under fire and saved his life. Then there was a line of trenches where a hundred and fifty-six men---they know his name: Jacquemin ! Jacquemin with the little mongrel dog always at his heels---a hundred and fifty-six men had eaten nothing for four days but the sodden bread left in their haversacks. Jacquemin filled several waggons full of bread and seating himself on the driver's seat of the first, he drove in that life-giving line under the fire of shot and shell, right into the very jaws of death. He brought sufficient supplies to save the line of trenches, for otherwise they would have had to evacuate them through starvation, as indeed was the case with others where this gay little Zouave could not reach. Just the giving of food to the faint and hungry men whose stern faces were set against death. That act brought him one of those medals across his breast---I forget which. Finally, the shot and shell which he had braved so many times was bound to get him, and with his leg and arm almost shot away he lay for dead amongst the other slain, and they buried him. They buried Jacquemin. Fortunately or unfortunately---it depends upon how he regards a life which he will live through henceforth with only one leg and only one arm---a little bit of his soldier's coat sprouted out of the ground. (They don't always bury deep on those fields.) And his dog saw it and smelled and dug and dug, and whined and cried, until they came and unburied Jacquemin and brought him back.

He is sitting up there at the Ambulance now, and his little dog is sometimes in the kitchen and sometimes comes up to the wards.

Jacquemin!

"Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait pour mériter tout cela, mon ami?"

What countless thousands of them have done, all along those lines---Englishmen and Frenchmen, Scotchmen and Irishmen, Indians, Australians, Canadians---hearts and souls and bodies offered up magnificently and valiantly sacrificed for the greatest Cause for which humanity has ever fought! Jacquemin brought them bread to the fighting line; and that great fighting line, by its effort, is giving bread for ever to the world. -

You may, my dear, know this poor chap, Jacquemin, well. Perhaps he was in your own ward. Indeed, my dear Anne, I should not be surprised if you had stood beside him through some of his dreadful dressings. But then again, he may have been one of the many who came in just after you left.

I cannot tell you how I long, long to be in America now; nor can I believe for a moment that my people do not voice the sentiments and the hopes and the patriotism of the Allies. It could not be otherwise.

The other day I wrote my first article in French, and the Echo de Paris has accepted it and asked me for more. Of course you can't imagine how surprised I am, and how perfectly delighted to find that I could dictate in French an article that a first-class journal would accept without corrections! Monsieur Jules Simon told me so himself. I will send it to you.

My dear, let me congratulate you with all my heart on the recognition of your work by the French Government. I am so glad. How deeply and entirely you deserve it!

PARIS, Aug. 1915.

DEAR BESSIE,

All day to-day I have been anxious, thinking of you on the Touraine crossing to Bordeaux. The news of the Arabic and its sinking, with the loss of life, was not reassuring to any one whose dear ones were putting out to sea. I could not bear to think what this week of anxiety would be.

Yesterday I went down to the Matin and saw Robert's secretary. Mr. Dumont told me that there was a question of your going to the Far East-Japan, Petrograd, and so forth. You can imagine with what mingled feelings I heard this news.

I have always thought that perhaps you were the one person in the world whom I unselfishly love (except my mother), because in what is good for you I can forget myself. You can imagine how keen this loneliness is here. Nobody knows better than you what Paris is when one is utterly alone. My absorption in buying Violet's furniture is at an end, for I have almost completed her purchases and the second invoice went to-day. Mme. de S. is at the seaside, and there is not one human creature in the place with whom I can exchange a word. Nor will there be until you return.

No words can tell you how glad I am that you are going to have this marvellous and beautiful experience. It seems to me that it must be the greatest thing in the world to go off into those wonderful countries with the person you love best for interesting work. What could be more ideal?

I look back and think now, my dear, of all those cruelly hard years of yours spent here in anxiety and toil and loneliness, and in many instances overshadowed by such dreadful griefs; and in contrast now your happy marriage and the opening up to you of far horizons and the companionship always near you of the one you love the best. Both mother and Hilda feared very much, I think, for my disappointment when this news should come of your prolonged absence and the great distance between us; but I want you to believe me when I say that 1 have not had one selfish thought about it---I might say, no regret. Everything is sad here, intensely sad. I could not wish for you to return to these scenes just now.

I am sorry, darling, that you will not see ever again this little home---probably. But after all, nothing makes much difference in these moments of change. When you come back, if I am here at all, I will be installed at No. 6. I have told you nothing of what I have been doing lately, but in buying all this enormous lot of things for Violet, I've come across one or two very beautiful objects, and I have bought two perfectly wonderful Louis XV. lacquer desks, worth from five to ten thousand dollars apiece. They are like jewels. One is Vernet Martin black, with golden figures and turquoise blue inside. Tonight, my dear, it stands in the little salon, in the place of the old Dutch bureau we know so well; and over it hangs an exquisite little group by a pupil of Boucher. And in the doorway near the dining-room is a red lacquer bureau, with a pinkish marble top---the most beautiful piece of furniture I ever saw. It is a perfect gem. Some of the little things I have seen in this moment of disintegration I have bought for very little and shall keep, I hope; so you will see them in the new home.

Dearest Bessie, take care of yourself in every way---about disease and danger. I shall pray for you devoutly.

I have just spent a sweet five days with Mme. de S. at Cabourg. There she was, in a tiny little house, all alone with her grief, her memories, and looking into a future devoid of interest. It was perfectly lovely to be with her, sad though she was. I loved every hour of my little stay. It was five hours in the train each way, but I was glad to go. She was like a sister and a mother and a friend all in one. No one in the world is like her to me, and I just adore her, there is no other word. Two or three times, quite alone, I went down to the sea. Never did it seem more marvellous to me or more inspiring. All the Normandy of the years gone by that together you and I knew and loved came back again with its tender memories and met me in those harvested fields and on that wide, smooth sea floor. I looked across the water that stretched to where you were and thought how soon you would cross it to me. I did not dream that it would be so long. . . Oh, my dear! memory after memory came to me, until sometimes it seemed that I could not bear to welcome any more. I saw again, Bessie, the little diligence climbing the Falaise side from toward Havre, and you and me on it going down to welcome Mother and John---do you know how many years ago? (I will not mark the years. As I stood there, down by the sea, there was no trace of time on that limitless expanse.) So many partings since then for you and me---so many, many tears, long years of struggle, days of hope, and days of despair. There have been safe ports and harbours, and you, I feel, with Robert, have sailed safely into yours. You see, I do not speak of myself---I can't.

You must feel, I think, my dear, as you read this, that these last few months---I will not say years---have made some change (I hope for the good) in me. Certainly I don't complain and bemoan my lonely fate as I used. Sometimes I wonder if my unusual tranquillity is a kind of despair, or a renunciation---if it presages some disaster, or if it is only the threshold of age. You see, I dare not hope that it may be the threshold of joy. Oh, I assure you that, standing there that early morning as I did, never, never have I felt so near to the truly spiritual things of life. By this I don't mean religious things, but the things of soul.

All around me were the tiny red and white tents---here and there a bright yellow one---the little pleasure houses of the few who this year have gone down for the summer to the sea. And everywhere were the sweet, charming little children playing, bare-legged, on the sand. I watched them build their miniature forts---little Frenchmen playing at war. I watched them with their pretty games, and I tried to see myself sitting there with a book, watching a child. I tried, companionless as I am, to see myself standing there with a companion by my side.  . . .

Normandy has been a rich field for the poets, as you know, and for the thinkers and idealists from England and from France. It is a very country of dreams and song. No one knows this better than you and your husband, who is a Norman born and who loves every inch of it. I think of that wonderful collection of verse that I have loved so much for years---you know it well. Its meaning was made clear to me by John. I can see him now, there on the Norman beach---tall, distinguished, with the little red book in his hand, "The Midsummer Holiday." And on that morning, as I stood alone on the beach after all these long, long years, I knew for the first time why I had loved that verse of Swinburne's so: and I knew for the first time what it meant.

The last time I was in Normandy was when I was taking back to England, via Dieppe, "Amanda of the Mill" to sell in London. That winter, if you remember, I had been very ill in Arragon, Georgia; and whilst lying down there---alone, in a cotton mill town, without any nurse or any doctor---in a moment half of delirium and half of consciousness, I made a solemn vow. On one night of fever in that wretched little shanty, I prayed to the Blessed Virgin, and I said that if she would heal me and restore me to health, so that I might write "Amanda of the Mill," I would be a Roman Catholic. Of course I never kept that vow; but that summer, in Dieppe, with my book finished, I remember going into the old cathedral there and burning a candle and, thinking of my vow, buying a rosary and prayer-book, learning the Ave Maria and trying to pray; and, recalcitrant and unwilling, unconvinced and unbelieving, could not and did not fulfil my promise. I never have . . . I thought of all this as, with Cousin Lottie, I went into the old cathedral at Caen and we prayed together before the Virgin's shrine for the souls of her beloved dead. Indeed, as I went into that church, I knelt with her unconsciously before a cluster of lights: I did not know where T was kneeling, but when I looked up, I found to the right of me a beautiful statue of the Madonna. It seemed very strange. I only mention all this as I seemed so singularly led back here, after many years, to the old footsteps, my weary feet unconsciously falling just where they had fallen before.

I cannot tell you how perfectly lovely Madame Angenard has been to me. If you love me, you'll he glad and touched at her friendliness, her sisterliness, and her real goodness to me. I have in her an honest and true friend. I always have had. To-day she lunched here with me, with little Nicole. As you know by now, she has given me, to inhabit as much as I like, a beautiful little house on her estate. The Saturday before I went to Mme. de S.'s, the eve of the fifteenth of August---the Feast of Mary--- spent at her château. As I wrote, two hundred soldiers are quartered in her grounds, sleeping on straw in the old farm buildings and commanded by Mme. de S.'s cousin, the Comte de Puy. We had just seated ourselves at dinner when outside the château gathered a little group of the soldiers with their musical instruments, and they played for her their best selections in honour of her fête, for she is called, as you know, Marie. We both stood there in the window, whilst the men, in their light blue uniforms, played their martial tunes. In the distance was the fountain, splashing and dashing its waters. A little further on, the clock on the old church rang the hour; and far, far away, muffled but audible, was the sound of the guns at Soissons. You can't think how impressive it was---and how sad. Mme. Angenard went down the steps to thank the soldiers. She was all in white, and over her dress a dark-blue Chinese embroidered coat, and her little girl came down and stood by her side, and the leader of the band brought a great bunch of country flowers, gathered and arranged by soldiers, and presented them to the chatelaine for her fête. Later in the evening, the Comte de Puy and Madame Angenard and myself stood in the starlight by the fountain, and we talked of the war. . .

Next week I am taking Hilda and Webb and going to Salsomaggiore to rest and finish "Carmichel's Past." From far Japan, wish me luck and good fortune as, my dearest, darling Bessie, I wish you Godspeed and safe home.

August 4th, 1915.

DEAREST BELLE,

It seems a long time indeed since I've given myself the luxury of a real letter to you. During the last two weeks I have had an Italian guest, to whom Paris and France were new, and it was a mutual interest to see what one can see of Paris now together---especially to do things with a deeply appreciative and keenly sensitive companion. Nothing of beauty or charm escaped him, from the smallest detail.

A perfectly killing thing happened one day. We were driving in the victoria, out on an antique furniture hunt, when way down the boulevard a Paris gamin sprang on the step of the carriage and hurled something into it. I've never been so startled in my life as I was by this rush into our tranquil moment. I didn't know whether it was the head of a German or a dead rat. Gaetano peacefully and calmly leaned over and lifted up a black kitten which, before I knew it, he had as calmly planted in the middle of the street, on the other side. I am glad to say it rushed off before the tram came, and Gaetano assured me that it brought the best of luck.

Then I must also note that one night, walking down the sightless, gloomy, shadowy Champs Elysées together from Mme. de S's, at eleven o'clock, we were shadowed by an apache. Although many nights I have wandered around here entirely alone, I was scared to death, and I seized Gaetano by the arm and said: "Let's run!"

He stopped quite still and looked at me with great reproach, and said: "Why, you seem to forget you're with a man! Why would you run?" I don't know whether the timidity on my part had charm for him or not; but at any rate, as I looked at him, so big and strong, muscular and vigorous, and at his great big cane, and into his quiet, determined face, I didn't feel afraid any more.

I never have seen anything so beautiful in my life as Paris has been on these divine nights, as we have driven around it in open carriages and in motors. It is almost completely dark now, with the great masses of Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Conciergerie, and the spanning shadows of the bridges dark and blurring softly against the moonlight of the summer nights, or darker shadows on the overcast evenings; with here and there just a light or two from a window or a low muted lamp. Paris of the old, old days---so easy to reconstruct and to imagine!

On Sunday morning I went out to St. Germain, where Mme. Marie met me with her motor and took me out to the lovely château that she has bought in Seine-et-Oise. It is a François Premier property, surrounded by great moats all grown in with ivy and grass. Her château itself is modern, but her gardens and fields are too lovely for words. She has four hundred soldiers quartered in the farms, and at luncheon what was my surprise to find that the Commandant was no other than the Comte de Puy, Cousin Lottie's dearest cousin---a man I know very well! We had a most agreeable time, and, of course, he told us wonderful things of the campaign. He was sixteen days in one trench without being able to leave it---without once being able to stand upright; and he says that no one who has ever smelt it will ever forget the smell of a German soldier! The filth and the dirt and the sordid awfulness of the Germans they took prisoners at that time was beyond words. This was in the early part of the war, on the first line of battle.

To the left of Mme. Marie's property is one of the sweetest little bits of masonry you ever saw in your life. It is part of an old tower, built in the time of François I.---unchanged, pinkish brick and brown stone. It was built for the archers to climb up into and from its windows to look over the wonderful Norman plains for their foes. The moat runs around it, and now, from one window, one sees the new rose gardens, the lovely shaded alleys, and the fairy-like Norman fields. The little place has undergone many changes, the late proprietors having turned it into a grapery and fruit house, because it is so dry and healthy. In the high, high cellars are wooden beams and a big furnace, and there's an outside staircase. One goes directly into a good-sized room with a bow window looking on the fosse. Then there are two other tiny rooms with cunning little views, two bedrooms, a charming parlour, dining-room and study all in one, and place for a little bathroom. Upstairs is the serre chaude---a great big warm greenhouse, where one could make an enchanting jardin d'hiver. With the outlay of very little money, this tiny place could be transformed into a dream of a place to go and pass the Sunday or a few quiet days. As I write of it, doesn't it sound sweet? Can't you smell the Norman hayfields, wafting in their sweetness? If you could hear the charming tone of the little church bell---for the church and just a handful of quaint little houses fling themselves against the château wall. From this little pavilion you could almost put out your hand and set the hands of the village church clock! . . Well, I have lots of friends who have beautiful places, but none of them have given me a little pavilion to which I can flee and which I can adore. Mme. Marie has. And next week she is coming to town to choose the papers; she is going to paint and paper it with her exquisite taste, she is going to put in the bathroom, and I am going to give the bathtub and lavabo; and we're going to fix it up together, and there I can go when I like. And when the weather gets hot in Paris, I am going to take Miss Methley and finish my book there. It is restful just to think of it, as Miss Methley says as she writes this letter. I am just springing it on her, as it was sprung on me: and if I never go, and if I never see it again, I can't forget the generous sweetness of my old friend, for whom I've always had an affection and whom I have known now for twenty years. Of course, her mania is to furnish and install, but it's very nice that she wants to include me in this exquisite installation. I felt quite differently about the country when I left it this time. The whole thing is so charming and so exquisite.

Little places are horrible as a rule, but a perfect little place on an enormous, beautiful estate is another thing. If the affair works, I can fit up a tiny kitchen downstairs, which I shall want to do, and be chez moi entirely. At any time I can take out a friend---for there will be two bedrooms and we are quite apart from the château.

So much wonderful kindness has been shown me in these old countries. I can never forget the goodness poured upon me; and of course I feel that in turn I should be willing to pour out myself into hands that are stretched out to receive.

I am sure that I make you feel something of the rich, beautiful atmosphere of that Norman land as I saw it this week. Through the little village pass only soldiers, to and from the towns; soldiers of the reserve, soldiers of the entrenchments around Paris; and some going home. In the far distance, when the wind was (let us say) cruel, we heard the heavy thunder of the German guns bombarding Soissons, only sixty kilometres away. Ecquivilly is only a few miles from St. Germain and a few miles from Trouville, and if Bessie is at St. Germain in September, and Cousin Lottie at Trouville, it will be amusing to be myself between them both. Of course it may be only a dream. It seems too much to count on to have an exquisite little country place. . . .

It seems terrible to write of material things, doesn't it? when the great spiritual struggle is going on everywhere. For some reason or other, I have not bought one of these beautiful objects which I have purchased lately without feeling that I was possessing something more of this beautiful country's art---keeping and protecting something more of France for posterity.

One of the guests at Mme. Marie's had come from Arras, where her château, with all her treasures gathered together for forty years---everything-had been stolen, sent back to Germany, and her place reduced to powder. Your blood would boil if you could hear the Comte de Puy's stories---that is, if it hasn't boiled and overflowed already.

I am very interested in writing you this letter to-day, my dear, from this little home, which I left just a year ago last Saturday in such haste and distress. It seems strange, doesn't it? Then I was planning for destruction and disintegration; and now, in the same country, still under menace, still with horrors around us, I find courage to plan for new footholds on this land. France seems peculiarly sacred to me, its ground watered by the blood of those brave and gallant sans. Its very wings seem lifted by invisible hands. Nothing in history has ever been more wonderful than its great, patient effort against a horrible invading force, against every quality that we all despise, and against which, with one common interest, we fight and have fought for generations.

It is just a year ago last night since Henry Dadvisard ran down the stairs in the Rue Galilée, after bidding good-bye to Mme. de S. When he got to the last stair, there in the hall were grouped all the servants, to wish him Godspeed---the women first, and the valets and other men at the door. Mme. de S., whom he had kissed and strained to his heart, twice turning and running back upstairs to kiss her again---watched him. The cook had been thirty years in the house; he kissed her on both cheeks and wrung her hands. Then, when he came to the men at the door, he bade them care for his adopted mother loyally and well; and to the little footman who held the door open for him, he said, putting his hand on Albert's shoulder: "Toi, mon petit, je te reverrai là-bas." How strange and how beautiful! Henry Dadvisard went to his regiment, joined later---as you know---the infantry, and there, in that company, "là-bas"---was poor little Albert, frail wraith of humanity that he was----only nineteen. He carried the flag, and he fell two days after Henry, on the same glorious field.

I think the expression "Là-bas" thrilling and expressive beyond words.

I found Mme. de S. last night weeping over the crowding memoirs that each anniversary of these days brings. "I have been able," she said, "to remember each day, and he has seemed living to me until now. Now---to-night---as once more I seem to see him run down those stairs and go, he is gone." . . .

I had not thought, when I began to write to you to-day, what a fitting close this letter is to these letters of a year; but it is so. Strongly, wonderfully, throughout these months stand out, shine and inspire, the ideals of Love, Courage, Devotion: Patience in terrible sufferings; Charity and Tenderness, Self-forgetfulness: Gifts that mean sacrifice---as from one end of the earth to the other men are laying down life for a holy Cause. Over these cruel sacrifices rise the spirit of ineffable youth; the glory of patriotism; love of home and country---all which makes the foundation of the human race enduring. I close with the beautiful words of Henry Dadvisard to his squadron as he bade them good-bye:-

"Above all the changes that agitate humanity, three things alone exist and remain: The Intelligence which comprehends, the Will which believes, and above everything else, the Sentiment by which we know how to love."

COMRADES,

I have gathered you together this morning to say good-bye to you.

I am not going to speak to you of the Present, because it is a heart-rending moment against which my heart breaks. . .

I am not going to speak to you of the Future, because the future belongs to God alone. . .

But I have the right---indeed, it is my duty---to recall to you the Past . . . the Past which we have made together and which we have lived together!

Officers, non-commissioned officers, brigadiers and troopers of my beloved Squadron! For every man of you who has ever come under my ægis. I have had but one word, one single order: Duty. It is in order to more completely accomplish my own duty that to-day I have the courage to part from you.

And you, all of you, with a unanimous élan, with a magnificent generosity, and with the spirit of your adorable youth---you have responded to my call and you have placed your heart in my hands. . . . And it is for this that I want to thank you. This moment contains a happiness that no other human love could ever equal. . .

Now go back to your duty, without discouragement, without sadness, recalling to yourselves unceasingly the one great thought that we have often followed together: this---To know that no one man is indispensable, and that above all the changes that agitate humanity, three things alone exist and remain: the Intelligence which comprehends, the Will which believes, and above everything else, the Sentiment by which we know how to love.

MES AMIS,

Je vous ai réunis ce matin pour vous faire mes adieux. . .

Alors! Je ne vous parlerai pas du présent, car c'est la minute déchirante où mon cœur se brise; je ne vous parlerai pas de l'avenir, car l'avenir est à Dieu seul; mais j'ai le droit, j'ai le devoir de rappeler devant vous le Passé que vous avez fait et que nous avons vécu ensemble. . .

Officiers, sous-officiers, Brigadiers et cavaliers de mon Escadron bien aimé, chaque fois que l'un de vous est venu se ranger sous mon égide, je ne lui ai jamais proposé qu'un but, celui du devoir accompli. Aujourd'hui, c'est pour essayer de m'en rapprocher davantage que j'ai la force de me séparer de vous! Et vous tous d'un unanime élan, par un don magnifique de votre adorable jeunesse, vous avez répondu à mon appel en plaçant à nu votre cour dans ma main!

. . . Ah! voilà ce dont je veux vous remercier ---voila le bonheur qu'aucun autre amour humain n'égalera jamais!

Eh bien, maintenant, retournez à votre devoir sans découragement, sans tristesse, vous rappelant cette autre grande pensée que nous avons souvent aussi évoquée ensemble: à savoir que l'homme indispensable n'existe pas et qu'au-dessus des changements qui agitent l'humanité, trois seules choses demeurent:

L'Intelligence qui comprend, la Volonté qui croit et par-dessus tout, le Sentiment par lequel nous aimons!

St. Amant, 26.2.15.

SALSOMAGGIORE, Sept. 12th, 1915.

MY DEAR BELLE,

How you would revel in the beauty with which I am surrounded! How you would love this country, what delight you would take in all I am seeing! You know I've wanted to make an Italian excursion and now, when Paris and all it represented of responsibility and fatigue and sadness, was growing a burden, Italy drew me irresistibly.

For years I have wanted to come to Salsomaggiore. With my perfect idea of geography, I thought it was on the Lake Maggiore. Nowhere near it, as far as I can tell, although I don't know much more about its geography now than I did when I came; but I know that we are on the edge of the "War Zone." Here they don't make so much fuss about it as they do in France, and to-day we drove into it bravely, and were not once stopped for a passport. I can't bear to use the words "war zone." I am tired, heart and soul, of the word "war"! I could shut my eyes on the loveliness of these towns when I realise that bombs from enemy aircraft were dropped upon Brescia---so near us-and that 160 people were killed.

The cure here is wonderful---iodine and soda baths, in water brown and salty. When it gets in your mouth you can't bear it; but you grow to love its soft, strengthening effect upon your body. I get up very early in the morning and walk on these wonderful hillsides, where the figs are growing ripe, where the grapes are growing ripe; and when once up on a dewy, ravishing little plateau, down in the valley I hear that rich, melancholy, swinging note of the bell of San Bartolommeo, the little chapel of the town. But there is nothing sad about the bell. Alone as I am here, pregnant as the moment and time is with sadness, for some reason or other there is nothing melancholy or sad about any of it. It is beautiful and restful and full of charm.

When I come down, refreshed and hot and healthily tired, I take one of these reddish baths, stew away for twenty minutes, and then comes the most divine and remarkable cure of all---two hours and a half wrapped in a bath robe, lying on a balcony in the broiling, delicious sun. I have done this for ten days, and I never, never, never shall forget the delight of those hours on the balcony of this hotel. I don't move---neither restless nor nervous---I look away beyond these soft, sweet hills, into a divine sky, and over the tops of those little gentle mountains, soothing, happy, promising and lovely thoughts come.

I feel so intensely grateful for the love that has been in my life, for the affection and kindness that have been showered upon me, for my splendid health and for my work.

The restaurant amuses me enormously, because it is full of picturesque Romans and Florentines and Neapolitans---the noblesses of all the counties is well represented. The place is smart, and even now quietly gay! There are soldiers en convalescence, there are political men from Rome; and I like to watch it all . . . . Then follow a little more treatment---a "pulverisation" or "inhalation"---and sometimes work from five to seven, sometimes work in the evening; and now and again an opera at the theatre, which lots of times is not half bad.

Caruso comes here every year for the cure, as do many of the famous singers; and the Queen Mother, who is very popular and beloved, is also an annual visitor to Salsomaggiore.

I wish you could see the little street at night, with its pink, green and yellow houses, the blue sky above it, the incandescent lamps swinging in it, the brown awnings, and, as we wander home from the cinema, a little café filled with simple, cheerful people, congregated to laugh and enjoy---what do you think?---a Punch and Judy show'! Just think of it---right there in the street at night! Oh, it's too amusing and attractive for anything!

America seems far away. As I never get any letters from any one, nothing brings it near. I can't help but feel, in contrasting the lives, that over there we are always scrapping around and going like mad to get money with which to do something else that nobody really wants to do very much. And over here one lives, one really lives. You just stretch out your arms in this sunlight and expand and breathe; your tense nerves relax; you're ready to settle down here with a simple companion and watch life around you---take what part you can and enjoy it. That's the way I feel. Perhaps it's because I weigh 145 lbs.; perhaps it's because I've got my certificate of baptism here, and I know just how old I am. I am going to sleep with that under my pillow, for fear somebody'll read it! Mother sent to the place where she was born and got her certificate of baptism, and found she was four years younger than she thought! Since then there's been no living with her! She has the airs of a débutante. But my certificate worked the wrong way.

Cremona is in the war zone---I have to write the word again, though I don't want to. If I told you that I wished the sun would never shine on Germany again, that the moon would never lighten its harvest fields again, how fiendish you would think me----how you would criticise my breaking of neutrality! Ah, when I think of the riches they have destroyed, when I think of the beauties that France can never call back again, when I think of their accumulated horrors, human, material---I am no longer human myself. And here, in this glowing country, with its jewels all around me, I feel like protecting them with my arms and my soul, and I wish I had fifty lives and could give them all to these lands that I love. That's the way I feel . . . . I have no spirit of criticism in regard to the policy of my own country. My country---right if it's right, wrong if it's wrong---is my country still.

How far I get from Cremona! I wanted to go there because---do you remember?---there, in your little parlour one night, inspired and fired by some talk we had had together, I planned out a little drama on the idea of a Stradivarius violin made in Cremona. I drove there to-day and found it glowing under a September sun. The Duomo has a Venetian tower-high, high up into the blue---a great big light-blue clock on it; little arches with snowy marble figures running along to the right---I can't describe architecture: it's beyond me. It was like a pomegranate, like an orange, like some wonderful fruit. Then the basilica, romanesque and baroque, was enormous and brilliant beyond words. Oh, what would I not give to have had you see with me that scene to-day! On the left as we entered was a tiny little chapel to the Madonna, all red---brilliant---a crimson lamp burning before the Heart of Mary. Pillars, arches, roof, aisles, everywhere, painted, decorated, golden, crimson---the most jewel-like and brilliant decoration that you can fancy. But the great sight was the High Altar, lighted with candles for the "Salut." Three priests in red and white robes were officiating, and with the delicate, flickering candlelight blended the azure smoke from the swinging censers. All the church was full of the people of Cremona---kneeling on that stone pavement in such attitudes of faithful piety, in such attitudes of appeal.

Old men praying for their sons in the fighting line, little old women with handkerchiefs over their heads; children young and old: such devotion, such touching, touching attitudes of prayer. We stood and watched these lights and the wonderful spectacle of the altar. After the elevation of the Host, when the service was finished, every light was extinguished, as if by magic, and at the same time great curtains of tapestry were pulled aside, and through the stained glass windows, all over the altar, poured a flood of glorious sunlight. I have never seen anything like it---never.

I have become acquainted with a very agreeable woman---the Marchesa di Bourbon-Rangoni. She is here with her little boy. She looks like an American, and has a gentle voice, and is altogether simpatica. She is separated from her husband,---and lives with her two children on the Di Faustina property. (Her sister-in-law is the Principessa di Faustina) I discovered that we had many mutual friends, and, curiously enough, the Countess d'Orsay came to-day, and it turned out that she is a friend of Marie Edgar's.

Yesterday I went over to a castello, the palace of the Soragna family, dating from the year 1000. I won't describe the rooms there, with their gold and crimson walls; but right in the heart of the castle we found a wonderful little chapel, and high up in the red-hung gallery, built in for the noble family, the woman with me knelt down and prayed. I could not but wonder whether she was praying for her son in the fighting-line, or for her daughter, whom she is going to bring out shortly into Roman society, or for her own lover, fighting in the Trentino. What a complex, wonderful mixture life is, isn't it? Half the world praying for what the other half has got and vice versa. Lonely women who have had husbands and lost them; lonely women who wish they could lose their husbands; lonely women who have no husbands and want them; lonely women who have no husbands and don't want them---and what in heaven's name is coming their way?

Did I tell you what a rich German said to Gaetano one night he dined with him in Philadelphia? After showing Gaetano the pictures by Old Masters in his library, and when Gaetano had properly admired them all, the gentleman said, with a melancholy expression: "Oh, it's all very well; but, you see, they don't pay any dividends." That's one way of looking at a picture gallery! You can imagine how it struck an Italian to whom beautiful pictures have always meant more than dividends---I suppose you will say "Unfortunately."

In one of your letters you asked me what I thought of American diplomacy? It is impossible from this distance to understand it. Fortunately, I don't have to be responsible for any people's diplomacy. The question is too great and too far away. Over here we see the insults offered to the United States; we follow the trickery and the lying stupidity of the Germans with surprise and disgust; but I feel, too, that their filthy expectorations don't always reach as far as our big, distant country. Loathsome beasts ---pouring forth their slime and their filth over the civilised world! That's how I feel about them. I am glad I am not in Archibald's boots. I crossed on the Rotterdam with him.

HOTEL DES THERMES, SALSOMAGGIORE,
Sept. 17th, 1915.

DEAREST MOTHER,

I have been very much delighted with your letters. Hilda let me read hers. I do think that you are too remarkable for words. Your handwriting is so clear, and everything you say said better than any one I know says it--than they would say it, if they had it to say! I don't know any one with your mind and your spirit. I feel as though I never could thank you enough for being my mother. I am sure this will please you.

It takes an awfully long time for letters to come here, and of course it takes an awfully long time for those letters that are not written to me to come! And the result is that I don't have any letters at all---just a few scraps.

I haven't written you anything about this enchanted place. I wish I could make you feel what it has been for me.

I don't understand my own temperament at all ---I suppose it is not necessary that I should. If I could only go on as I start, how far I would get, and what I should accomplish!

There seems to have been an especial blessing in this place for me. I hope it is a real one. I hope it's not just my romantic imagination that makes it seem so. Whether it is or not, the pleasure that I have had on this balcony I can never, never lose. I shall remember always these golden hours. To-day I lay three hours out here in the sunlight---scarcely dreaming, basking like these little green lizards that run out over the stones and scare me to death. There is a very magic in the air, too. Every country has its individual odour and smell. (Paris, in the autumn, when the wood fires are first lit-heavenly odour, full of memories!) Here the scent of the land is delectable---these fields, warmed by the most ardent suns, give out the smell of red and white clover, and of some Italian flowers whose names, of course, I don't know, being the least botanist in the world; but I know it's not garlic!

One could take delightful drives if one could pay for them. There is every kind of vehicle, from a little two-wheel waggon a few inches high, drawn by a microscopic donkey, to motors of all kinds and makes. I believe that if I could settle down and live in Italy, I might become a better character. I really want to economise here, and it seems to me that one might almost find a charm in living within one's income!

The doctor wants me to take twenty-five baths, which would mean that I would not leave here before the first of October; then spend a week in Florence, and the rest of the month near Rome---perhaps in Perugia---and really finish "Carmichel's Past." This I plan to do. I am going to stay in the little pension you and Violet and I stayed in together as cheaply as I can; and I am going on cheaply until I've finished this novel.

You say that J should be grateful because I can have this wonderful cure and rest. Perhaps it is because I am so grateful for all I have that the good things come to me. Certainly my heart is just overflowing with thanksgiving for the moral and spiritual uplift that this rich experience has been.

You remember the desk that you have there in your parlour? That desk stood in my little apartment in Twenty-Seventh Street, as you know, the winter dear John was with me. I wrote everything that I had to write that winter at that desk,; and sometimes John wrote there too. I can see him sitting writing at it now. It was February---the month he died. I had planned to have a little party on the 27th of that month, in that tiny little sitting-room, and ask a few of my friends to come and hear me read aloud my first short story---something he liked very much indeed. It was called "The Path of the Storm" do you remember?---and came out in Harper's after John died. I remember looking up at the calendar that hung over that desk and finding February 27th, and marking a black cross on it---the day of my party to be. The 27th came, and it was the day John died.

I speak of this, for all its sadness, to follow on to something else. Sitting at that desk, John wrote on a scrap of paper, in his strong hand, with a bit of pencil, something that---for some reason or other---had crossed his mind: just a line:-

I don't know whether it's a line of a poem or something he meant to elaborate; but when I opened that desk after he had gone, I found that little errant slip of paper. It was dear to me. I picked it up and fastened it just across the top of the inner part of the desk, where I kept my papers. For fourteen years it was always before my eyes. I never read it but it seemed to speak to me with a peculiar message. Down in Rome four years ago, when I was recovering from pneumonia, it seemed to call me then. I thought of it constantly. But for some reason or other, although the call was decided and clear to me, I have never answered it.

I recur to all this to say that here, in these September days, seventeen years after he wrote that little fugitive line, I feel that I have responded to his call. You know that I have never been fond of the country. Thoroughly urban and intensely alive, meditative life and isolation has always driven me to melancholy and discontent. But here--now for some reason I can't tell why---the outdoors has spoken to me for the first time without sadness. For the first time in my life, over these small and gentle hills, I have seen the sun set without that sharp pain at the heart that beauty gives to those whose lives are solitary and who have suffered a great deal. For the first time, I have seen the moon rise, and loved it calmly for its pure beauty, without longing and without regret.

So, dearest Mother, when in your letter to-day you said to me so charmingly: "Let companionship be found by you in contemplating the works of God in the beautiful country where you have wandered now," I think I may truly say to you that I have found such companionship.

Not long before I sent that desk over to you, that beloved little scrap of paper had fluttered away. I don't know where it went. It was material, but its spiritual message has been fulfilled. . .

SALSOMAGGIORE, September 17th, 1915.

MY DEAR CARLOTTA,

You know how often I have called you by an Italian name. I have thought of you so much since I have come to Salso, and wished a dozen times that you might have been with me here. I should love to see your graceful silhouette passing through these rooms. This happens to be one of the places that I think you would enjoy immensely, from all points of view. Restful and charming; gay, and yet not too blatantly so in this sad time.

The Sicilian soldiers are allowed to take their long knives into battle with them, and they throw away their muskets to use their knives, as the Indians do; and they say that the bravery of those little Sicilians has been superb. When the Austrians see them, they throw up their hands immediately, and ask to be made prisoners; and the Sicilians give them to understand that they're not taking any prisoners to-day, and they must fight or be cut up. But the Austrians take prisoners, when they can get them, and their brutality is pretty well shown in the following incident. They took pains to find out which prisoners were from Calabria, and then told the poor chaps that all their homes had been destroyed by earthquake; and the poor prisoners cried like children. There seems to be no refinement of cruelty that the Austrians and Germans have not employed, even to trafficking with the sentiments of the prisoners who fall into their hands.

Much of the cream of Roman society is here at present---everybody very simply dressed and quiet, of course. It's a most interesting study for me---so different from anything I have ever seen; and you can't think how sweet and cordial they are to me---those of them whom I've met.

I am going down from here to Florence for ten days, to stay in a little pension where Violet and Mother and I stayed years ago; and from there to Rome for a few days, and then for three weeks to Perugia.

I heard a charming thing the other day about some English soldiers. It seems that where they are fighting, up in Flanders, under a little hill some thirty or forty of the boys had been buried in a little cemetery just out of the German fire. It was safe, but it was dreary and lonely---a bare cluster of graves. There happened to be, not very far from the lines, a pond overgrown with water-lilies. One early morning, in the dawn, when they thought it safe enough to risk, several of the Tommies swam out into the pond and gathered garlands of the lilies, and carried them over to the graves. The soldier who wrote it from the trenches to me said: "And if you'd known the men who did it, you wouldn't have supposed that one of them was soft-hearted enough to risk his life to put a lily on a grave."

If you write me before the 15th October, address Sebasti & Reale, Rome. Otherwise, 4, Place du Palais Bourbon, Paris.

With love to all,

SALSOMAGGIORE, Sept. 20th, 1915.

MY DEAR VIOLET,

Yesterday I went for a motor drive with the Marchesa di Rangoni to a fifteenth century castle a few miles from Cremona. The Marchese G. S. at twenty-two has come into possession of this old fief-in his family for 500 years. He is a fine boy, and lives there, the tiny little village coming in, almost, at the window of his study, as he looks at the town across the moat. There he sees the ducks and the geese, and the little bent old women, and those who are left of the men, the miniature donkey carts, the charming children, the clean roofs, the pink and violet and yellow houses; and from son to father, and on back, back, all the eyes of the villagers have been turned toward the castello, where his people have been nobles so long. His mother died in May, leaving him this possession. There are miles of lovely park, through which we wandered at sunset, the rosy light filling the bosks and shining on the turrets. Bebetta Rangoni and I went with a young Venetian officer, there on leave for a few days.

"The war," he said, "which is taking so much from every one, seems to have given to us Venetians Venice again for our own. No one is there but the people themselves and we, who are really fighting for our hearthstones. At night there are no lights---none---but a few little shaded lamps, like in the fifteenth century. But not even the hand of God has put out the moon and the stars, and Venice is there under their light. Oh," he said, "we who are born in Venice are born, I believe, with an extra beauty-loving sense-we love it so And just now its treasures seem so rich and so precious."

He turned to me and said: "You must come, Signora, and see Venice now---the real Venice---and watch with us for the Austrian aeroplanes---if they still dare to come!"

Afterwards we had tea in the tiny room that the chatelain occupies, because, of course, the salons and libraries are never lived in. Then we drove home, many, many miles, the moonlight's soft, warm radiance falling over these lovely fields.

This week I am going to Bologna, and I will write you of what I find interesting there. Then to Florence for ten days, to stay, my dear, in the Villino Solferino---to stay in the same old rooms! Think of the memories I shall find there! I hope to carry "Carmichel's Past" on far towards its finish in the same room where I wrote many chapters of "The Girl from his Town" and "The Successful Wife"; and where you and I, at midnight, chased that cunning, distracting little mouse! How far, far away it all seems! If any one had told you then that you would marry a distinguished man and have such a varied and interesting life, how hard you would have found it to believe! We were both so poor, and I was so anxious and so troubled about our future that I could hardly work. I can remember now waking in the night and feeling the weight of the burden upon me of years to come in which I might be too tired to work, and still the demands of life would have to be met. Fortune and fate, my dear, were kinder than we knew. Isn't that so? Everybody will ask for you when I go back there, and it is lovely to think that I have only good news to tell.

I'll close now, for the present, with much love.