Dearest Father:—

I dashed off a few words to you almost in my sleep the other night to be sure of having something on the Espagne. Sometimes I don’t feel like getting out a bolt of wrapping-paper and beginning at the extreme end, and that was one of the times. I did manage to jot down a few theme sentences, however, and now I will proceed to talk.

To say that we are overjoyed with the Ford is to put it mildly! It is the ideal car and body for our purposes and we all feel much indebted to you, Father dear, and to Mr. Migel. Two perfectly lovely letters are on their way to him from Mrs. Shurtleff and me respectively. Mrs. Shurtleff would like to know the name of the dealer who gave the thirty-three dollars discount, to write him a note also. As for lettering, we shall have time to think of the flourishes when the car arrives. I am glad you didn’t bother about it as Mrs. Shurtleff wants to have an American flag underneath the name to let the French people see that it is an American work.

The American mail has just come, and such a dandy lot has come my way! I am sorry you have worried about the box sent November 15th; I acknowledged it last time, but I will say again how much appreciated everything was. The December 9th one came Thursday January 18th, which was very quick, as we count on six weeks for cases. I was as excited as a colt and went at it with hammer and tongs—in this case an old rusty axe and a pair of pinchers—and pulled forth joyfully the shirts, coats, and all the things. Certainly Mother does send jim-dandy things. I shed a few sentimental tears on the name-tag on Mr. Hathaway’s coat and more tears when I didn’t find my Oxford book or any peanut brittle! But the box did contribute something to me personally which was of the greatest value, which will appear later in my narrative.

It is touching to hear the refugees tell what they have tried to save from their old homes. If they have been driven to Paris by bombardment they have perhaps been able to save a couple of mattresses (so handy to travel with) or some blankets; but for the ones who have been in the invaded country and have only recently been repatriated by the Germans, they rarely arrive here with anything but the clothes on their backs. The trip is eventful enough, usually, in trying merely to keep life going without juggling with furniture and extra clothes. They are sent from Northern France into Germany through Switzerland to Southern France and thence up to Paris. The traveling is not de luxe as you may imagine and takes many hours—days even. To get a vivid idea of the journey you should have it described by an old dame of seventy summers who has never set foot out of her native village before. She will sit with ten or twenty knitting needles flashing in her lap, her white cap tied neatly under her chin and rattle on in toothless but fluent patois reciting a series of experiences that you wonder she could ever have survived. Perhaps you can picture for yourself the effect of taking any old country woman that we know through the Dolomites under a hostile guard.

Highest praises are always given to the Swiss. They have given warm clothes, warm food, and a warm welcome to countless refugees that I have talked to.

What you say about the feeling in America, that France at the end of the war will be safe from the encroachment of other nations for generations, sounds encouraging, but does that imply that the end of the war is a long way off? I have been astonished ever since coming to France to find the general expectation is for an early termination of hostilities—very early, this spring or next fall at the latest. My opinion was formed almost entirely by the “New Republic” and the Frank H. Simonds articles in the “Atlantic” and in the “Tribune,” so that I considered the fall of 1918 to be the most logical time to hope for the end. What the Allies have to do seems still well-nigh insurmountable, but to my surprise, young and old, rich or poor, wise or foolish, seem sure that 1917 is, indeed, l’annÉe de la victoire et de la paix. I can’t tell whether it is because they wish it so hard or because to people who have seen and are living among the results of such tremendous desolation, it seems impossible for it to go on longer.

Please send more “New York Tribunes.” You have no idea how they are appreciated by all of us. I took the ones Mother sent over to the Shurtleffs, then over to Mrs. Houpt’s, then up to Miss Dorr’s when I went to tea one afternoon, and when I asked some people in they were the features of my party. The W. E. Hill drawing of “scenes in the hat department” brought down the house.

We haven’t seen such good war pictures over here at all, and the pictures of the stage and society and art exhibitions, etc., are fascinating. It is wonderful to know that such things are going on. Then for news, the regular “Tribune” was gobbled up. We have only these punk French papers and the punker “New York Paris Herald,” which costs three cents and consists of one sheet of four pages—of nothing. We read, “Quiet night on the front”; “Wilson presses investigation of ——, may write note to Germany”; and accounts of the London dog shows morning after morning. Take pity. And especially the magazine sections of the “Sunday Tribune,” and more stuff by Hill!

Now for my Hymn of Hate which is in this case a Hymn of Heat. I am cold. This is a theme which has been elaborated in every degree of variation, and amplification since December 23, 1916, I think. I wrote you about that time that our steam heating had died suddenly and ingloriously, so it was with relief that I read in your letters of this morning no trace of worry about how I was managing to exist. All the old wiseacres that I meet, and this includes Mrs. Shurtleff, shake their heads and say, “If your father and mother knew how you were living, what would they say?” and I think to myself, “They would probably think it was jolly well good for me—and that it was a terrific joke.”

As I said, the Chauffage Central didn’t marchÉ on December 23, and hadn’t marchÉ-d since. The proprietor says he can’t get any coal, and this may be true enough, for the Seine has been rising and rising, and a few days ago was higher than at any time since the floods of '08. Great quantities of coal are at Rouen, but the transports can’t get under the bridges to bring it to Paris, with the river so high. It seems that almost every one’s proprietor was far-seeing enough to get in a huge supply last summer, but ours was probably strolling along some sunny beach and never gave the question a thought. To-day Mme. H—— heard that he has been laying in coal at his residence this last week, and still won’t provide for us. The only indemnity he can be made to give is five francs a day per apartment, and it costs about two francs per room a day to keep heated by coal or wood. The five francs pays to keep alive the stove that Madame has had put in the dining-room and for the extra gas she uses in cooking.

And where do we come in, we pensionnaires? We buy our own coal or wood or petrol stove, as the case may be, and it’s very hard on some of us, particularly Mlle. Germain. And on top of all this, we freeze.

I thought at first that it would be lovely to have a darling little fire every night, and I never thought what it would be to get hold of darling little logs and then make them burn. For a week or two it was more or less fun and very war-y, but the drawbacks begin to pall after weeks. You see the fireplace is only nineteen inches wide (I measured it with the little blue tape measure Mother gave me), and the logs I burn are about twelve inches long. So at best the heat penetrates to a maximum distance of five feet. And finally the logs they send me are wet—and you can’t get kindling. If you could imagine the amount of time I have spent kneeling in my fur coat before the miniature fireplace trying to light a couple of wet logs with an old copy of the “Herald,” you would certainly smile. Here’s where the cases from home came in strong. Our good helper Agatha and I split them into kindling and made two bundles and I carried them home. It is typical of the Latin Quarter that no one gave me a second glance as I strode along the street with a big bundle of wood on each shoulder. They burned as nothing ever has burned in my sight before. I told Mrs. Shurtleff that I was going to write next for a case of kindling from America!

Fortunately it is not as cold here as it is in New York, although this confounded thermometer means so little to me that I can’t tell you just what it is. Some days it’s zero, others it’s 2, and in the house it’s 5 or 7, and it feels just as cold as that would be on good old Fahrenheit. It’s just as cozy to live in my room these days as it would be to live in a tent out on Place Denfert-Rochereau. I can see my breath if I care to look, but I’m tired of it as we approach the fifth week. I wear my fur coat most of the time and sometimes my hat, and settle down on a hassock in front of whatever fire there is, to read. I have tried wearing gloves, but the pages stick so that I lose in temper what I make up for in warmth. To play my piano is like playing on icicles. But I play just the same and then go into the kitchen to warm my hands. I have Louise put some of my wet logs on the back of the stove when she has been cooking and it has dried them out fairly successfully.

You can imagine what getting up in the morning is like. If it weren’t immodest I’d like to dress out on my balcony, for I think the temperature would be an improvement. The very walls of the room are cold, they haven’t been heated for so long. And as for touching the bare floor or a door-handle! Really, had I the tongue of Greeks or Jews or possibly Siberians or Esquimaux I would describe our home atmosphere, which makes itself felt as it whistles under the doors and around the windows—but not unless. But I wouldn’t think of moving even if I knew of any warm place to go. The people are just like a big family and I’ll never desert Mme. H. —— Micawber. It will be lovely in the spring.

And after all I love my little fire “that goes in and out with me.” And I feel so settled here. I never wake up in the morning any more and say like the bewildered little darky, “Whar me!” and when I open the front door at night I feel that I never really belonged anywhere else.

What I look forward to all day is getting into bed at night. I slide in between the icy sheets and find the tin bed-warmer that Olive gave me, and then way down at the bottom a hot, squashy, hot-water bag. I tuck the comforter in tight, and pull my fur coat up over my head and stay there suffocated until I’m sure my nose is warm enough not to keep me awake, then I uncover cautiously and slowly go off to sleep. When once asleep nothing could wake me up—not the Allies victorious or the Heavenly trump. But before I go to sleep I have a fine chance to think over happy things of the past and I do love it. I think of what fun we used to have at Northampton, especially those two years at the Lodge. It seems too wonderful to be true now, to think of living not merely with people who were girls your own age and spoke English, but your very own best friends that you would pick out from all the world. All living together under one roof!

When it was cold like this there was skating on Paradise, and after giving three looks at our history in the evening, a bunch of us would go down to the boat-house and put on our skates and go out and skate by the electric light and moonlight combined. Then when we were frozen, we’d come in and warm ourselves by the huge fireplace, leave our skates, and go down town to Kingsley’s for some hot chocolate and whipped cream. When the moon shone full on the white snow it gave the luster of midday all right. I can just hear how our footsteps crunched and the snow squeaked, it was so cold. As we’d be drinking our chocolate some one would look down the street at the town clock and cry, “It’s quarter of ten!!” and we’d dash out of the place and run like mad up Main Street, turn to the left at the watering-trough, up West Street, down Arnold Avenue, and pound up the kitchen steps of the Lodge. Usually we got there just as the college clock was striking ten. We’d fly up the back stairs and undress in the dark and jump into bed. “Nothing on our minds but our hair!” It seems so long ago.

This letter is going very slowly, I’m afraid. If I could only write with my left hand, it wouldn’t be so bad, but I have to keep stopping to put my right on the hot-water bag to keep my fingers going. They look like carrots, anyway. Please tell Aunt Esther that I have become a mad devotee of hot water as a beverage. This ought to put new life into her, for I have always felt that she never quite recovered from the obstinate way I used to take the pitcher of hot water, regularly delivered to me on a tray flanked conspicuously with a cup and saucer, dump the contents into the bowl and bathe comfortably and leisurely. This at the age of eight. Now all is changed. I drink what is brought piping hot for me to use to bathe in, and bathe in the dispirited contents of my night-blooming hot-water bag. Such is age—and Paris.

Now the results of this constant warfare between man and the elements are twofold. I first might say that my flesh is brilliantly branded by the various applications, too arduously embraced, so that it looks as though giant postage stamps had been applied promiscuously over my huge gaunt frame. Secondly, I am a bit done up. With my room fairly uninhabitable it has been against nature to refuse as many of the cordial (and warm) invitations that have been given me as would have been consistent with wisdom—certainly ag’in’ my nature, and I have tired myself with trotting back and forth from one fireside to another on top of the new forms of work that I have been adapting myself to. I have gone out a great deal to tea, and sometimes in the evening, too, and haven’t rested very much. Yet it’s little comfort to come home and rest when you’re shivering!

However, I’m not a bit discouraged about anything—one must find out one’s strength somehow—and please don’t worry. By the time you get this I shall probably be blooming.

I heard “Faust,” with Mary Aiken and her mother a week ago Saturday—the only time since Mother took Olive and Franklin and me eleven years ago, when it was my first opera. It was glorious! I seemed to know it all and what I didn’t know was lovely too. We had dandy seats in the parterre—only seven francs seventy centimes, the seventy centimes being a tax for the poor, imposed on all theater and opera seats. Do you remember when we used to struggle and squeak through “Anges purs, anges radieux”?—where it goes up a key each time? I find myself singing, “Salut, demeure chaste et pure,” as I turn my chilled footsteps toward Place Denfert-Rochereau sometimes—so chaste and pure that there is no sybaritic allurement even in the fireplace.

I must tell you how wonderful that child Gile Davies has been to me. Every week since I’ve been gone I’ve had a note, sometimes a long letter from her; and not a word did I write until Christmas-time. To cap the climax, I received a package a day or two ago—a Christmas present. It was a baby blue satin handkerchief bag that she had made herself, with a handkerchief and a sachet inside. It seemed great to see anything so pretty and useless after so many flannel waists and boots and trousers and all the homely things that are so indispensable. In the bottom of the box was the most precious of all—an enlargement of the picture Martha took of Gile one morning when she was putting up the flag at Bailey’s—Gile in a middy blouse with the sun full on her, just turning to smile as she’s pulling the ropes; and Harpswell and the Sound in the distance.

When I found that, on top of the handkerchief and the sachet, I just opened the bag and risked all the blue satin lining by crying into it. Oh, I never saw anything look so sweet.

I think I was even gladder about what you wrote of wearing my circle scarf-pin for my sake, than about the Ford; though maybe it’s wicked. I can forgive with abandon, and picture with tenderness the cruel and unusual neckties in which it probably nestles. My one fear is that you may waste too much affection on me when I’m away, thinking that I have changed. I haven’t at all, malheureusement. It’s just that blessings apparently seem to brighten immediately after taking flight. I never do anything wonderful at all. I sometimes get tired clear through and wish there were some one to manage things for me—some one to take me out—some one else to buy the tickets—some one else to order the taxi—some one else to decide what to do. I just long to get all dressed up and go out somewhere and see people in evening clothes. Sometimes I feel that I’d rather put on a pair of long white gloves than put off the old man! You can see from that.

Remember that if I’m your little tin-god-on-wheels, you’re mine, and I think of you every day, no matter what I’m doing, and send you oceans of love, not only for all your kindness to me and others, but because I love you, anyway.

Dear Father, don’t worry, I’m going to get a stove.