, for both your sakes, I want, before I own up that this adventure
has been a failure, to try and pull something out of the wreck. If the
government says I CAN, then I still may be able to do something. If it
says, "NO," then it's Home, boys, Home, and that's where I want to be.
It's home, boys, home, in the old countree. 'Neath the ash, and the
oak, and the spreading maple tree, it's home, boys, home, to mine own
countree! This is Hope and you. So know, that in getting to you I
have not thrown away a minute. I have been a slave-driver, to others
as well as to myself. But you cannot get favors with a whip; and, the
French war office has other matters to occupy it, that it considers of
more importance than an impatient war correspondent. So long as you
understand, it will not matter. Nothing hurts, except that you may not
understand. The moment I see you, and you see me, you will understand.
So, goodnight, and God bless you, you, my two blessings. Here is to
our own year of 1915, your year and Hope's year, and, because I have
you both, my year. I send you all the love in all the world.

RICHARD.

January 5, 1916.

MY DEAREST ONE:

WHAT PICTURES! WHAT HAPPINESS! What a proud Richard! On top of my
writing yesterday that I had had no sketches of yours, and no kodaks of
Hope, eight came to-night, and oh! I am so proud, so homesick. What a
wonderful nurse and mother you are! Was ever there anything so
lovable? And that she should be ours, to hold and to love, and to make
happy. These last eight days in Paris, in and out, have made me so
homesick for those I love, that you will never know what the delays
meant. I felt just the way poor women feel who kidnap babies. In the
parks I know the nurse-maids are afraid of me. I stick my head under
the hoods of the baby carriages, and stop and stand watching them at
play. And tonight when all these beautiful pictures came, I was the
happiest father anywhere.

The delay was no one's fault, not mine anyway, nor can I blame anyone.
These people are splendid. They are willing to do anything for one,
but it takes time. When they are fighting for their lives and have not
seen their own babies in a year, that you want to see yours is only
natural and to oblige you they can't see why they should upset the
whole war. But now it looks less as though I would have to call it a
failure. And Hope may be proud of me, and you may be proud of me, and
I will have enou