In spite of all you tell me I have lost, I have a stray assortment of arms and legs left, ungainly, I admit, but still serviceable, whether for reaching for the bread at messtime or for pushing me around my broad parish. I hear that I am dead—wounded—gone crazy. I hate to contradict so many good people, but I must say that I know I am alive, and that I never felt better in my life. As for the third count, perhaps I had better leave it to others to testify, but I’m no worse than I always was. I may be considered a bit off for coming over here, but that’s a decent kind of craziness, and one I am glad to see becoming quite popular. I wish that my case could serve as a warning to good folks at home who are distracted by all sorts of rumors about their lads here. If anything happens to any one of us, the folks will hear of it from Washington within a hundred hours. If it says “Slightly Wounded,” they may take it as good news. For let me tell you, if I was worrying continually about the fate of some dear one over here, and got word he was “Slightly Wounded,” I would sigh a sigh of relief that the beloved was out of harm’s way and having a good time for a while. I don’t mind rumors in the army. They are part of the game. With eating and growling, they constitute our chief forms of recreation. Fact is, I am made the father of most of them in this regiment. When some lad starts his tongue going, and everybody tells him just what kind of a liar he is, he says that Father Duffy said so, and Father Duffy got it straight from Secretary Baker or General Pershing, or, who knows?—by revelation. It is a great compliment to me, but a left-handed one to my teaching. At home, though, rumors don’t just interest—they hurt. I know how much they hurt, for my pile of “agony letters” keeps mounting up with every mail. And I can’t answer them all at length, as I would wish—not if I want to do anything else. First-class mail is the bane of my life as Chaplain. Like everyone else, I don’t mind reading it, but I know what it means when it comes to answering it. Gosh! how I hate that. I like to keep on the go. I have to keep on the go to get anything done, with the regiment scattered in five different villages, miles apart, and outside work to do in the other outfits for men that want the sacraments, and hospitals to visit. And to have to stick a whole day at a table to soothe sorrows that don’t exist, or oughtn’t to—whew!