Your Chris.
Halle, Wednesday night, August 5th, 1914.
I've got as far as this, and hope to get on in an hour or two. We've been stopped to let troop trains pass. They go rushing by one after the other, packed with waving, shouting soldiers, all of them with flowers stuck about them, in their buttonholes and caps. I've been watching them. There's no end to them. And the enthusiasm of the crowds on the platform as they go by never slackens. I'm making for Zurich. I tried for Bale. but couldn't get into Switzerland that way,—it is abgesperrt. I hadn't much difficulty getting a ticket in Berlin. There was such confusion and such a rush at the ticket office that the man just asked me why I wanted to go; and I said I was American and rejoining my mother, and he flung me the ticket, only too glad to get rid of me. Don't expect me till you see me, for we shall be held up lots of times, I'm sure.
I'm all right, mother darling. It was fearfully hot all day, squeezed tight in a third class carriage—no other class to be had. It's cold and draughty in this station by comparison, and I wish I had my coat. I've brought nothing away with me, except my fiddle and what would go into its case, which was handkerchiefs. Bernd will see that my things get sent on, I expect. I locked everything up in my trunk,—your letters, and all my precious things. An official came along the train at Wittenberg, and after eyeing us all in my compartment suddenly held out his hand to me and said, "Ihre Papiere." As I haven't got any I told him about being an American, and as much family history not till then known to me as I could put into German. The other passengers listened eagerly, but not unfriendly. I think if you're a woman, not being old helps one in Germany.
Now I'm going to get some hot coffee, for it has turned cold, I think, and post this. The one thing in life now that seems of desperate importance is to get to you. Oh, little mother, the moment when I reach you! It will be like getting to heaven, like getting at last, after many wanderings, and batterings, to the feet of God.
We ought to be at Waldshut, on the frontier, tomorrow morning, but nobody can say for certain, because we may be held up for hours anywhere on the way.
Your Chris.
It's a good thing being too tired to think.
Wursburg, Thursday, August 6th, 1914, 4 p. m.
I've only got as far as this. I was held up this time, not the train. It went on without me. Well, it doesn't matter really; it only keeps me a little longer from you.