And if you be passed, Eloise, if you be passed, even yet will I keep writing to you. For if letters be written with one's heart's blood, I know, in my soul of souls, that our dead will read them. For though I have lived but a little while according to the span of things, and less according to the knowledge of things, yet the little span and the little knowledge have made known to me the greatest of all truths: that I do not know: that even with my little knowing I have seen things come to pass which were more wonderful than those which I thought could ever be; that we live on the borderland of a world wonderful, mysterious; that we are clasping hands with eternity, and need only the language that will yet come to spell out the touch for us. And so I shall write to you even though you are dead, write to you, sweetheart, a love letter for your heaven, knowing that not only will you read it, but that I, in the writing, as in all giving, will at last be the one who will get.
It is selfishness in me at last, Eloise, selfishness that I may hold through life and forever this love of you in my heart, now that it has only memory and not your own sweet self to live on. And no greater love and more constant can there be than that which lives on memory. For the living-love, being flesh, must change with the years. But memory-love, being eternal, can never change.
I am at Iloilo; and the gap is great since that long ago June, that June of Tennessee blue grass and roses, and the old home and you, sweetheart.
* * * * *
There is little to tell of my leaving; of my quick decision to fight for my country and for you, Eloise. For, cast from my father's house there was nothing left but my country's, and losing the love of my kindred there was only your own great love left me, yours and my country's. For these I am fighting. But at the last—I know you will want to hear it all—at the last our old grandsire seemed strangely touched, and the memory of it has burned my heart, once strangely amid flying Filipino bullets on the firing line, and once amid the thunders of the great thirteen-inch guns from the Monadnoc. And right glad I believe he will be when he learns, that though he called me a fool for refusing a soft place as aide to dear old Hawthorne, and a greater fool because I refused a commission which he himself could have got for me for the asking, and took a musket in the ranks instead, that I have risen from a private to the Captaincy of the crack company of the First Tennessee. So say the Regulars of the Bloody Fourth that we backed to a fight to the death against the Filipino trenches. So says old Hawthorne himself—God's blessing on his old white head!—now commanding our brigade, who led us in with the rebel yell in his throat! And riding Satan, Dear Heart; cannot you see the picture, such a man on such a horse! And you should have seen how Satan loves the firing line and how he hates the smell of a Filipino and his pony!
* * * * *
But this story must be told straight even in a love letter to my unseen love in an unknown land.
When I left home I only took my father's sword and Satan. I took him because of my love of you, and that old Hawthorne, our General, might have a horse to ride into battle that should be worthy of his rider. For if you have ever thought of it, sweetheart, you will know that no great soldier ever owned a mean horse.
I joined a company of the First Tennessee. In the company next to me was Braxton Bragg, commanding it by the influence of our old grandsire.
My first promotion came in San Francisco, where we camped for a month before sailing for Manila, via Honolulu. Our Captain was a Tennessee lawyer who knew little of the game. It was I who drilled the company, my German work stood me in good stead, and we won on dress parade drill. We were the best drilled company of the First Tennessee. Then our Captain resigned to practice law in San Francisco, and I was made First Lieutenant.