"This frantic enthusiasm for 'democracy,'" said he, "on the part of people who have spent their whole lives combating it!" He sat relaxed in a deep chair, hands hanging limp on its arms--hands large, strongly muscled, marked with heavy veins, the fingers full-fleshed at their tips, the skin bronzed by the sun. Tatters of sunlight, reflected from the wavelets of the river obliquely up underneath the hickory boughs, flickered on the ceiling and walls of the hut. Disillusioned he was, but not cynical. His humor was a bath to a sore spirit. He kindled, in the moral solitude of that hour, a little fire of faith and hope. It struck me anew, eyeing him as he sat there, what a beautiful creature he was, inside and out. There was in him, too, an odd streak of stoicism. Keen as he was for "the eats," he delighted in little acts of self-discipline. That afternoon, it being necessary for me to try for a nap, he cleared out to gather views of river and woods. An hour later I discovered this young Spartan, hands clasped behind head, spine stretched along the plank flooring of the narrow ledge in front of the hut, sleeping quietly.... The next day he made himself everlastingly solid with the people at the farm by spending the whole morning fitting screens to the multitudinous doors and windows of their ark of a house. Everyone wanted Fritz to stay a month. At nine that evening he left. As we trudged over the road in the warm darkness of the summer night, he talked soberly of the dubious future. * * * * * He was not called until the following April, 1918. Twice that winter he came to Boston. Number 94 Charles Street had been dismantled. But the third-floor-back on Pinckney Street received him with an extra cot for bivouac. ... This should have been the longest chapter of all, and the best. I find that I cannot write it. * * * * * Only a postscript. I asked him for a picture of himself. "What do you want," he inquired, "a painting?" My ideas had been far more modest: "Beggars should not be choosers. I will take what I can get: painting, photograph, snap-shot: and be thankful." "What size would you like?" "Small enough so that it can go wherever I go." He made no promises. His way was to wait until the time came and then let the performance speak. Not three weeks later it came: a sketch in oils, head and shoulders, ten inches by twelve, not at all the cold greenish grays I had anticipated from his habitual attitude of self-effacement, but on the contrary a scheme of rich golden browns. He has painted his own portrait with the same reticence which looks out of its eyes. Strangers seeing it remark, "What a striking face!" His friends view it and say, "He was much finer looking than that." IX The rest is seen dimly, as through a mist. His voice is heard, distinct and clear, but as from a great distance. To Ralph Heard he writes from Camp Lee, Virginia: