1

In Albania, on the shore of her most beauti–
ful lake, Oct 13, 1917.
I regret the necessity of using a typewriter, for your sake, little
Particularist. I said one time that I should not feel called upon
to explain my reasons for typing instead of penning to you, but that
you could understand that I shouldn't do it unless there was no op–
portunity at the time to use a pen. But, you see, it is like this:
I really do like you a little bit, I like you so much, in fact, that
I will explain, even tho I feel somewhat like a weakling in doing so!
A weakling in the Emersonian sense. And so –––– I am, as I said, on
the shore of the most beautiful lake in Albania. I am alone at the
post. Instead of its being the wild and unpopulated place that you
probably imagine it to be from the term "post", it is in a town, a
town which the Boche rested in for three years and more before the
latest French advance. I am in a real Albanian house –– a square,
stone structure, in which an Albanian (Mohammedan Albanian) family
lives also. We have one half. They have the other. I have just sent
Ben Curler and Jack Nichols into the Base Hospital with loads of
malades, and I am waiting here for whatever calls come in for the post
nearest the lines. I may have no call during the day. I may haveaa
dozen. But I only have a small amount of paper, and have no way of
getting more here when this is done. I have no ink. I have much more
to tell you than I possibly could get on the amount of paper I have,
should I write with the stub of a pencil that I have. I may not have
an opportunity to write to you again for several days, and I want to take
advantage of this. I think that you would prefer me to take advantage
of this, rather than have me leave out a lot of things that I want to
tell you, and rather than have me sit around reading the dictionary
and the Bible, which are all the books that I have with me, instead of
writing to you at all. There. Now you may read or put aside till you
feel like reading my news whether it is in cold print or not! "Do just
as you like."

I am going to France.
I may be starting in the next week. The French section that is to re–
place our unit here is already on its way from Salonique. Some of
them have arrived at our home now. We are simply waiting for an order
of movement. We are in a state of rather excited anticipation, for it
may mean a change of service for us soon. It may mean a return to the
U.S.A. for some of us! It is more likely to mean re–enlisting for the
duration of the war with the American Forces in the Ambulance Service
for me. And that is all that I know of the matter now. We are ex–
pecting definite word tout de suite.

Your letters of August 24 and 27 came to me day before yesterday. And
when you said that you were about to board the next airship mewards, I
almost believed that you really might come out of the sky and promenade
the lake shore in Albania with me some sunny afternoon –– and wander
about in all sorts of strange nooks with me, and listen to the Moham-
medan priest pray in a high pitched voice from the top of the minaret
that I am looking at now ––– "Allah Allah Allah! There is but one God,
and he is Allah!" And be impressed as I am when less the Mohammedan
peasants stop by the roadside and rest while he cries his cry from the
four sides of the minaret. You, little Romantic maiden, with your desires
for a life of the unusual, with me, a sentimentalist of the old times,
with my sometimes longing to be home from my wanderings in strange
places, and to settle down and domesticate with some maid of domicili–
ary longings! What an opportunity I have –––––––––––––

I don't remember now what the opportunity was that I was about to ela–
borate on. The other two fellows who are to hold down the post with
me for the next twenty–four hours have arrived, and I have cooked a