While the War Board regaled itself with stories of doughboy exploits at Cantigny and Château-Thierry, the saving of Rheims, the capture of Soissons; while it speculated over the big gun--where it was, how it operated--quarreled over the merits of arms, and exhausted itself in devising methods of destroying Germany--the town outside, the busy, working town, seemed sometimes to Dick almost to be living in France with the boys. Quite wonderfully and naturally they had built up from what came to them in letters and news the life of their boys over there. Of course they were proud of their exploits, but they did not want to dwell too much on them; they meant ghastly wounds or death--what they wanted to know was just how the boys lived, and where, the kind of beds they slept on, the kind of food they ate, whether it was really true that when they fell ill they had the care that they ought to have; and all of this, this eagerness to know where the boys were and how they were getting on in detail, made every letter that came almost a matter of town importance. It was quite amazing how the contents of these letters circulated. The very arrival of one was known, sometimes, in advance of its delivery, for the post office force took notice when a letter from anybody in the A. E. F. arrived, and I have known it more than once to happen that if a letter came in Saturday night--there was no Sunday delivery--one of the postal clerks would run immediately to the telephone and call up, "Hello, Mrs. B., here's a letter for you from Tom, if you want to come down and get it. None of us can get away much before midnight." You can imagine how quickly Mrs. B. went or sent. The great interest and excitement of the postmen's life in those days was delivering the letters from the A. E. F. It was the practice of these functionaries in Sabinsport to put the mail in the box outside, if you had one; to throw it on the steps if you had not; or sometimes, if it rained, to try your door and throw it in the hall; but whenever there was a letter from a soldier none of these things were sufficient. Your bell rang with an eager, insistent cry which said, "There's a letter from Tom." And the next morning, the probabilities are that the postman lingered a bit to see if you didn't come out and tell him personally something of what was in the letter. And you did it. Oh, how you loved to tell what was in the letter! And how it went up and down the town and everybody telephoned and compared it with what was in Frank's letter, or Will's letter.