Lots and lots of love to you all. Tell John-on-the-corner, Mary Devlin, and all that I am looking forward to seeing them all in May. Tell Mrs. Dow that her candy is the best ever, and that it is in much better condition when she packs it in lead paper and in a tin box. Lots and lots of love again, and here’s hoping that you are still alive after the eleventh page of rambling of your very-affectionate-and-looking-forward-to-being-home-soon
Daughter,
Marje.
XXX
FROM ESTHER
Thursday evening, January 31, 1918.
Dearest Family:—
Last night was it—the biggest raid they’ve ever had on Paris. When I think that at nine o’clock I was sitting up in bed with a sniffling cold, bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t seem to write anything but the stupidest sort of letter when I had a whole week packed full of events to tell you about—when I think of that, I don’t know how I shall begin to tell you all to-night.
Every one has been expecting an air raid on Paris for quite a time, and Sunday evening we were all set for it, for the moon was full, and it was the Kaiser’s birthday, and we worked our intuitions to the utmost. Last night, when I snuggled down in my warm bed, I had forgotten all such possibilities.
Suddenly I heard that siren that means one thing and one thing only. It’s a dismal, foreboding sound. There’s also an “alerte,” a sort of horn that blows at the same time, that sounds as though a fiend were putting his whole lungs into it. I didn’t stir at first because I thought it might be a false alarm, but the siren and the alerte kept it up and kept it up, so that Marje and I, for curiosity’s sake, slipped into our fur coats and went out on the balcony. We saw a few aeroplanes and rocket signals and heard a distant booming of guns. The street lights went out one by one and the tramways rumbled ponderously home from their last nocturnal journey.
It was an ideal night—the moon had waned only a little and the stars were bright; but never did “the luster of midday to objects below” give such a desperate feeling of defenselessness as when we looked out across the Place and saw each tree and building stand out distinctly.