Byron
".... Et deduxit eos in portum voluntatis sorum".
Psalm. CVI, 30.
Next morning, before I was dressed, came this note:
"I have just received word that I must take my company out to the camp at once. Please excuse my not coming. It does not make so much difference, now that you are to stay. Will write you from the Camp. Only a few days absence. I shall think of you.
Imre.
P. S. Please write me."
I was amused, as well as pleased, at this characteristic missive.
My day passed rather busily. I had not time to send even a card to Imre; I had no reason to do so. To my surprise, the omission was noticed. For, on the following morning I was in receipt of a lively military Ansichtskarte with a few words scratched on it; and at evening came the ensuing communication; which, by the by, was neither begun with the "address of courtesy", as the "Complete Letter-Book" calls it, nor ended with the "salute of ceremony", recommended by the same useful volume; they being both of them details which Imre had particularly told me he omitted with his intimate "friends who were not prigs." He wrote:
"Well, how goes it with you? With me it is dull and fatiguing enough out here. You know how I hate all this business, even if you and Karvaly insist on my trying to like it. I have a great deal to say to you this evening that I really cannot write. Today was hot and it rained hard. Dear Oswald, you do not know how I value your friendship. Yesterday I saw the very largest frog that ever was created. He looked the very image of our big vis-a-vis in the Casino, Hofkapellan Számbor. Why in God's name do you not write? The whole city is full of tiz-filléres picture-postcards! Buy one, charge it to my account, write me on it.—