r
dinner if you know that while he was fighting on the Aisne, it was your
privilege to help a little in keeping his wife and child alive."

The winter of 1914-15 Richard and his wife spent in New York, and on
January 4, 1915, their baby, Hope, was born. No event in my brother's
life had ever brought him such infinite happiness, and during the short
fifteen months that remained to him she was seldom, if ever, from his
thoughts, and no father ever planned more carefully for a child's
future than Richard did for his little daughter.

On April 11 my brother and his wife took Hope to Crossroads for the
first time. In his diary of this time he writes, "Only home in the
world is the one I own. Everything belongs. It is so comfortable and
the lake and the streams in the woods where you can get your feet wet.
The thrill of thinking a stump is a trespasser! You can't do that on
ten acres."

A cause in which Richard was enormously interested at this time was
that of the preparedness of his own country, and for it he worked
unremittingly. In August, 1915, he went to Plattsburg, where he took a
month of military training.

PLATTSBTTRG, N. Y.

August, 1915.

DEAR OLD MAN:

This is a very real thing, and STRENUOUS. I know now why God invented
Sunday. The first two days were mighty hard, and I had to work extra
to catch up. I don't know a darned thing, and after watching soldiers
for years, find that I have picked up nothing that they have to learn.
The only things I have learned don't count here, as they might under
marching conditions. My riding I find is quite good, and so is my
rifle shooting. As you could always beat me at that you can see the
conditions are not high. But being used to the army saddle helps me a
lot. I have a steeple chaser on one side and a M. F. H. on the other,
and they can't keep in the saddle, and hate it with bitter oaths. The
camp commander told me that was a curious development; that the best
gentlemen jockeys and polo players on account of the saddle, were sore,
in every sense. Yesterday I rose at 5-30, assembled for breakfast at
six, took down tent to ventilate it, when a cloud meanly appeared, and
I had to put it up again. Then in heavy marching order we drilled two
hours as skirmishers, running and hurling ourselves at the earth, like
falling on the ball, and I always seemed to fall where the cinder path
crossed the parade ground. We got back in time to clean ourselves