same little boys bowling hoops over the very cobbly cobble
stones. I had afternoon tea at a patisserie and ate a great many gateaux
for the sake of old times. We had a very choppy crossing, and you would
most certainly have been sick had you been on board. It seemed to me
that I must be coming on one of those romantic holidays to see churches
and dead history--only the khaki-clad figures reminded me that I was
coming to see history in the making. It's a funny world that batters us
about so. It's three years since I was in France--the last time was with
Arthur in Provence. It's five years since you and I did our famous trip
together.

I wish you were here--there are heaps of English nurses in the streets.
I expect to sleep in this place and proceed to my destination to-morrow.
How I wish I could send you a really descriptive letter! If I did, I
fear you would not get it--so I have to write in generalities. None of
this seems real--it's a kind of wild pretence from which I shall
awake-and when I tell you my dream you'll laugh and say, "How absurd of
you, dreaming that you were a soldier. I must say you look like it."

Good-bye, my dearest girl,
God bless you,
Con.

IX

September 8th, 1916.

MY DEAREST ONES:

I'm sending this to meet you on your return from Kootenay. I left
England on September 1st and had a night at my point of disembarkation,
and then set off on a wandering adventure in search of my division. I'm
sure you'll understand that I cannot enter into any details--I can only
give you general and purely personal impressions. There were two other
officers with me, both from Montreal. We had to picnic on chocolate and
wine for twenty-four hours through our lack of forethought in not
supplying ourselves with food for the trip. I shaved the first morning
with water from the exhaust of a railroad engine, having first balanced
my mirror on the step. The engineer was fascinated with my safety razor.
There were Tommies from the trenches in another train, muddied to the
eyes--who showed themselves much more resourceful. They cooked
themselves quite admirable meals as they squatted on the rails, over
little fires on which they perched tomato cans. Sunday evening we saw
our first German prisoners--a young and degenerate-looking lot. Sunday
evening we got off at a station in the rain, and shouldered our own
luggage. Our luggage, by the way, consists of