bet I’ll walk like Charlie Chaplin, but when one is flying, it doesn’t make much difference about feet.”

Nothing is going to stop her. She is to start to Paris to-morrow, and I will go, too. I know all of you think I should stay here in G—— until I can get into communication with Bobby, but Molly Brown, I can’t do it. When history is being made, I simply can’t stand aside and see it. I’ve got to get in it by hook or crook.

Don’t be scared—I am not going to fly! I wish I could, but I promised Kent Brown I would never fly with any man but him, and while it was done in jest, in a way I still feel that a promise[15] must be kept. I wish I were not made that way. I’d like to dress up like Jo Bill Perkins and pass as a man, and I could do it quite as well as Jo, in spite of her having practiced being a boy all her life, but I can’t help thinking what Bobby has always said to me: “Just remember you are a lady and you can’t go far wrong.” Somehow, I am afraid if I cut off my hair and discarded skirts, I might forget I am a lady. It is an awful nuisance being one, anyhow.

[15]

I don’t know just what I am going to do, but I certainly can’t cross the Atlantic, with Bobby and poor little Mamma somewhere in Germany, maybe locked up in dungeons or something. I know it won’t help them any for me to be in France, but at least I will be nearer to them geographically.

My letter of credit on the Paris bankers will put me on easy street financially, so as far as money is concerned, Bobby will know I am all right. I can’t think the war will last very long. Surely all the neutral countries will just step in and stop it. The French are looking to United[16] States. It is very amusing to hear the old peasants talk about Lafayette. They seem to think tit for tat: if they helped us out more than a century ago, we will have to help them out now.

[16]

I can’t tell what I think just yet. Everything is in too much of a turmoil. I wish I knew what Bobby thinks. He is always so sane in his political opinions. I get more and more uneasy about them, Bobby and Mamma. Such terrible tales of the Germans are coming to us. I don’t believe them, at least not all of them. How could a kindly, rather bovine race suddenly turn into raging tigers? Why should any one want to do anything to Bobby? I comfort myself with that thought and then I remember how hot-headed and impulsive he is, inherited directly from me, his daughter, and I begin to tremble.

Jo and 

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