MilColl_WWI_82_Box2

P.S. I read The Turmoil and enjoyed it though I think the story ends in a poor compromise.

R -

Decmber 9, 1917.

Dear Mama,

As the days come and go I do my work, enjoy my leisure, and sleep through the nights much as though my work were not war, and my leisure not far away from home. One has to go far to find no comparisons, and should comparisons fail, one has always a book. But

above all things, one has his thoughts vibrant with lovely memories. So sweet it is to walk over to the old gin and the pasture, so pleasant it is to associate each bush and stone with some frolic of the long ago, that I stroll over there often in spirit. It is so easy to journey by imagination.

But a trip home by means of the memory has too

many limitations to be completely satisfying. Such a trip always takes one by the home of the present into the home that used to be. It is easy enough to go over the [by?] road to the Cousin Francis that was when the road was, but it is impossible to go over to the Cousin Francis that now is small enough to leave home in a Ford. It is easy to put a line on old Mary and carry her

to graze while I [?read] Lena Rivere, but it is impossible to graze Jane or Nellie, because they are of the present. In a word when one has a good time with one's imagination and memory, it is always by going back into the future. It takes facts to connect one with the present. Therein lies the pleasure