Before mobilisation I finished editing “Dreams and Images,” an anthology of Catholic verse written since (but including) Patmore. Terrible rush job, but pretty good book. Do you mind having it dedicated to you? Wanted to include some of your stuff, but didn’t have time to get any. Have dedicated it to you, but can change it, if you wish. Don’t hesitate to say so! Can’t hurt my feelings! Hard military character, seriously considering acquisition of habit of chewing tobacco. This is an absurd note, but I find myself very stupid at writing. Perhaps after drill becomes easier, I’ll have more of a mind left at night. Fr. Dwight honoured me by asking me for a sonnet on St. Ignatius for _America_, but I fell down on the assignment. I could not write even a limerick on St. Ignatius in my present mental state! But it’s a comfortable life physically--mentally too, I guess, and as for spiritually, why, pray for yours affectionately, JOYCE. * * * * * (Sept., 1917). Thursday. Dear Fr. James: I never expected to write to you on lined paper or Y. M. C. A. paper--uses of adversity! The Y. M. C. A. gives us poor “dough boys” the only place we have to sit down and read and write--so far the Knights of Columbus have not been in evidence in this highly papistical camp. I am, as you know, a member of the 165th Infantry, U. S., formerly the 69th New York. I have recently been transferred from Co. H. to Headquarters Co., and exchanged my 8 hours a day of violent physical exercise (most deadening to the brain, a useful anodyne for me, coming as it did after my grief) for exacting but interesting statistical work. I am called Senior Regimental Statistician, but in spite of all these syllables still rank as a private. My work is under the direction of the Regimental Chaplain, Fr. Francis Patrick Duffy. The people I like best here are the wild Irish--boys of 18 or 20, who left Ireland a few years ago, some of them to escape threatened conscription, and travelled about the country in gangs, generally working on the railroads. They have delightful songs that have never been written down, but sung in vagabonds’ camps and country jails. I have got some of the songs down and hope to get more--“The Boston Burglar”--“Sitting in My Cell All Alone”--they are fine, a veritable Irish-American folk-lore. Before I was transferred to Headquarters Co., I slept in a tent with a number of these entertaining youths, and enjoyed it tremendously. We sang every night from 9 to 9.30. Now I am in more sophisticated but less amusing company--ambitious youths, young office men, less simple and genial than my other friends.