And thus keeps melancholy down.
Her letters breathe of hope and cheer;
No note of gloom she sends from here,
And as her husband reads at night
The many messages she writes,
He chuckles o'er the closing line.
She's failed his secret to divine—
"When you get home," she tells the lad,
"You'll scarcely know your doting dad;
Although his hair is turning gray,