Here I find myself writing to you without waiting for the usual two or three months to elapse. Do you realize that it was over five and a half months ago that I left my native land? It doesn’t seem near so long to me. Just at present I have about thirteen hours a day to write, read the _Washington Star_ and _New York Times_, eat an occasional meal (we only get two over here, worse luck), build fires in the stove and stroll for exercise. The rest of the time is devoted to sleep. A terribly hard life that of an aviator on the western front! No _appels_ (meaning roll calls), discipline or inspections. Only, if there should happen to be a good day, one might be wanted to fly a bit. So far (I have only been out here a week) we have had perfectly ideal aviators’ weather--nice low misty clouds about 300 or 400 feet up, which quite prevent aerial activity and yet one is not bothered by mud or depressed by rain. In the morning, one awakes, pokes his head out the window, says “What lo! more luck, a nice light _brouillard_” and closes the window for a few hours more of sleep. Really I have done more resting the past week than most people do in a lifetime! To get statistical, I finished up at Pau (from where I sent to you a letter, _n’est-ce-pas?_) a month ago, and then spent two very unpleasant weeks at Plessis-Belleville near Paris, at the big dépôt for the front, waiting to be sent to an _escadrille_, with nothing to do but a little desultory flying, nurse the system, food, weather, lodging, discipline, etc. Eventually my turn came and, with another American, I was dispatched to Esc. SPA 84, where we arrived after the usual delay passing through Paris. That’s one nice thing about this country: all roads lead to Paris. Sent from one place to another, it is a safe wager that one goes _via_ Paris, and always takes forty-eight hours there and gets permission for it if he can. There are a few Frenchmen there still, but on the streets one sees almost entirely American, British or British Colonial officers--occasionally a French aviator and of course clouds of sweet and innocent young things--yes? Nearly all of my classmates are over here and get to Paris every once in a while, so all I have to do is to sit at the Café de la Paix and if I wait long enough, some one I know will surely come along.