ut your love is what really lifts me up and consoles me.
When I think how you and I care for each other, then, I am scared, for
it is very beautiful. And we must not ever be away from each other
again. God keep you my beloved, and both my blessings. I cannot bear
it--when I think of all I am missing of her, and, all that she is
doing. God guard you both. My darling and dear wife and mother of
Hope.

Your husband,

RICHARD.

SALONICA, December 18th.

DEAREST WIFE AND SWEETHEART:

I am very blue tonight, and NEVER was so homesick. Yesterday just to
feel I was in touch with you I sent a cable through the fog, it said,
"Well, homesick, all love to you both." I did not ask if you and Hope
were well, because I KNOW the good Lord will not let any harm come to
you. I am certainly caught by the heels this time. And it will be the
last time. As you know, I meant only to go to France where no time
would be wasted in travel, and I would be able to get back soon. But
the blockade held up the ship and on the other one the captain stayed
at anchor, and, then when I got here, the Allies retreated, and I had
to stay on to cover what is to come next. What that is, or whether
nothing happens, you will know by the time this reaches you. So, here
I am. For TEN days until this morning we have never seen the sun. In
sixty years nothing like it has happened. The Salonicans said the
English transports brought the fog with them. Anyway, I got it. My
room is right on the harbor. I never thought I would LOVE an oil
stove. I always thought they were ill-smelling, air-destroying. But
this one saved my life. I wrote with it between my knees, I dry my
laundry on it, and use the tin pan on top of it to take the dampness
out of the bed. The fog kept everything like a sponge. Coal is thirty
dollars a ton. To get wood for firewood the boatmen row miles out, and
wait below the transports to get the boxes they throw overboard. I go
around asking EVERYBODY if this place is not now a dead duck for news.
But they all give me no encouragement. They say it is the news center
of the world. I hope it chokes. I try to comfort myself by thinking
you are happy, because you have Hope, and I have nobody, except John
McCutcheon and Bass and Jimmie Hare, and they are as blue as I am, and
no one can get any money. I cabled today to Wheeler for some via the
State Department. I went to the Servian camp for the little orphans
whose fat