My own work is growing steadily more interesting. For a while I worked, as you know, in the Adjutant’s Office, having special charge of recording and reporting statistics. But this I gave up recently to enter (as a Sergeant) the Regimental Intelligence Section. This is much better for me, since it is open-air work of an intensely interesting kind, and I think that I am now more useful to the Regiment. My newspaper training, you see, has made me a competent observer, and that is what I am nowadays--an observer of the enemy’s activities. I have already some strange stories to tell, but for telling them I must await a time when censorship rules are abrogated. I have written very little--two prose sketches and two poems since I left the States--but I have a rich store of memories. Not that what I write matters--I have discovered, since some unforgettable experiences, that writing is not the tremendously important thing I once considered it. You will find me less a bookman when you next see me, and more, I hope, a man. Pray for me, my dear Father, that I may love God more and that I may be unceasingly conscious of Him--that is the greatest desire I have. Your affectionate friend, JOYCE KILMER. * * * * * _To Reverend James J. Daly, S.J._ Cragmere, Mahwah, New Jersey. Oct. 7, 1912. My dear Father Daly: I hope that I interpret your letter of September 20th correctly in thinking that it means that you will permit me to write to you occasionally, and that you will write me in return. Of course I know that your work occupies much of your time, and that you have pleasanter uses for your leisure than writing letters to some one you have not seen. So do not feel obliged by courtesy to answer me at length. I am glad that you like some of my work. My present occupation is that of assistant editor of _The Churchman_, an Anglican weekly paper. It is a Church Newspaper, with some literary features. Did Grey tell you that I was not of your Communion? I hope that this knowledge will not shut me out of your regard. Your remarks, in your letter, on the fact that many of our most famous writers to-day are anti-Christian, are certainly justified. Still, do you not think that a reaction is coming? Already we have Chesterton, and Belloc, and Bazin, and Miss Guiney, and Fr. Vincent McNabb, and a number of other brilliant writers who not as theologians but purely as literary artists express a fine and wholesome faith. People are beginning to tire of cheap eroticism and “realism” and similar absurdities. Yours sincerely, JOYCE KILMER. [Illustration: JOYCE KILMER, AGE 5