“Excitement all the time. Cooties but no war as yet. Mademoiselles aplenty but all ugly. All my love—all my kisses—and I wish you could be with us. LEON.” A couple of days later I sent a note to Aunt Elinor. It was written on Y.M.C.A. paper, after I had spent some time visiting post card vendors in search of appropriate cards to send home. As all the vendors had nothing but photographs suitable only for private collections—some of them actually revolting in the scenes they depicted—I decided that they couldn’t possibly get through the United States Mail. I did buy about a dozen of the rarest ones—for no better reason than that the legless veteran who had them seemed to take it for granted that an American soldier was interested in such pictures. My education was proceeding again. I wrote to Aunt Elinor: “I bought a wonderful collection of rare prints to-day. Too valuable to send by mail, so I’ll bring them home with me. Every time I look at them I realize that Home was Never like This!” And it certainly wasn’t! A few days later everyone was required to go to the movies in the Casino. I had no idea what was coming or I might have tried to escape the ordeal. I fell in with the rest of the outfit and sat in the midst of a crowd that was anything but ladylike. The picture was supposed to be educational, was entitled FIT TO FIGHT or something like that, and by the time it was over, I must confess that I wasn’t fit to do anything. Whew! And the comments the fellows made anent various familiar details. Every new sequence in the picture recalled some personal experience or story to somebody near me, and between the picture and the stories, I was blushing from my hair to my toes. After we came back, Ben said, resentfully, “They can’t kid me on that stuff! Seein’ a thousand pictures like that wouldn’t make me lose interest in a good-lookin’ shank!” I decided that Ben had a cast-iron system. I wondered what had become of Leon. Aunt Elinor wrote that his arm was practically well again and that he had left Booneville. I wondered what he intended to do. I might have known that he wouldn’t stay there, although it would be a wonderful place for him to commune with nature and let his muse run wild in poetic ecstasies. It just goes to show that you never can tell about anyone. Anyway, I rather wanted to know what to expect of him. Jay-Jay should have been in France by now. It seemed rather funny that I didn’t hear from him. Perhaps that meant that he didn’t really think I was here. He never did have much liking for Leon, so naturally would not break his neck to see him. But Jay-Jay was foxy: you couldn’t tell what he thought or was planning. It wouldn’t make me peeved if I never saw him. That’s how much I loved that gentleman. —3—