It is several hours since I wrote the first paragraph of this letter. I have been to supper (I am hitting the mess-line these days, for my money gave out and I didn’t want to borrow any more) and ridden in a motor-cycle-side car all over the countryside--through a dozen little villages, every one full of French and American soldiers, with a sprinkling of coolie labourers, in quest of a certain village which holds two companies of a certain outfit with which I had to have a conference. The village was hard to find (their names all sound alike, and old French ladies, when interrogated as to direction, always point in a direction in which there is no road and say something that sounds like “Honk! honk! Ba! ba!”) and also the night was cold. I have enjoyed many rides more. Returning to the office (I sleep in the same building) half frozen and weary, I found that not two truck-loads, but two sacks of letters had been delivered, and that I had received three letters. I leaped at the letters--one was an invitation to a Ladies’ Day at the Columbia University Club, another was from my mother, another from Fr. Garesché. None from You! You accused me in one of your letters of writing to you when I was depressed--well, I’m depressed now, all right! I’ll wait until to-morrow morning to finish this letter, I guess, or else I’ll give you real cause for complaint. Not that I blame you, or think you haven’t written often--it’s the mail system’s fault. Good night! I hope Kenton has learned to serve Mass by this time. I wrote to him a long time ago and told him to see Fr. Morris about it, but I fear that he would be too shy to do this unless some pressure were brought to bear. If you would ask Fr. Morris to teach him how to serve Mass, and persuade him to ask Kenton to come to see him about it, so that the initiative would seem to come from Fr. Morris, I think things would work out well. I pray for Kenton to have the grace of a vocation to the priesthood--I hope he may have a Jesuit vocation--and I think it is good to do all we can toward the fulfillment of this desire--this is, I think, a supplementary way to “sway the designs of God.” I think of the children often and can visualise them well in spite of my long absence from them, that is, all except young Christopher. I am aware of Kenton’s gravity and of his thoughtful and radiant smile, of Deborah’s vivacity and exquisite colouring (she is like one of her mother’s gay thoughts), of Michael’s magnetic rotundity, of his blue eyes, of his charming habit of toppling over like a toy tumbler of lead and celluloid. And of Rose I am nearly always conscious, delightfully, when I am awake and often when I am asleep, and especially when I am in the church--which is twice every day, to receive Holy Communion immediately after Reveille and to pray for a few minutes in the evening. We have a magnificent old church in this town, as near to where I am now as the church is to our house in Larchmont.