NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1917 Copyright, 1917, by The Century Co. ———— Published, April, 1917 TO The Memory of C. H. M. DOUGHTY-WYLIE, V.C. "THE MAJOR" OF THIS BOOK Who was killed in action leading a charge on Gallipoli Peninsula, April 29, 1915 When I was a Freshman at Bryn Mawr I decided I should "write something." My girlhood was uneventful and joyous—the girlhood of the lucky American who has a wholesome good time. I knew I must wait for experience. I was too sensitive about my youth to expo

Tarsus, Turkey-in-Asia, December second,   Nineteen-Eight. Mother dear : My first married birthday! I am twenty-six years old. It is twenty-six weeks since The Day. I have been counting up the different places at which we stopped on the way from New York to Tarsus. This is the twenty-sixth abode we have occupied in the twenty-six weeks. Isn't that a coincidence? You are smiling and saying that it is just like honeymooners to notice it at all. Wish you could sit beside me near our big log fire in

Tarsus,   December twenty-fifth. Dearest Mother : College classes going at full swing to-day. It is not Christmas for the boys. Some of the early missionaries to Turkey had it in their noddle that December twenty-fifth was really the day Christ was born, and they were shocked to see the Greeks celebrating January sixth and the Armenians January nineteenth. Missionaries were unimaginative, too, wrapped up in their own narrow ideas, too sure they were right and all the rest of mankind wrong (else

Adana,   February eighteenth. Dearest Mother: You know how I love week-end visits. I used to put Uncle John's Christmas check into a hundred-trip ticket between Bryn Mawr and Philadelphia: so that if my allowance ran low I could get away from college over Sunday anyway. Week-end visits here are really not had at all. There is no hotel in this town. Characteristically, Daddy Christie has the office force at the station pilot foreigners coming to Tarsus straight to St. Paul's College, no matter wh

Tarsus, March fifteenth,   Nineteen-Nine. Dearest Mother: Do you remember the day I was talking to you about the mother-in-law problem and I said I was put to it to know what to call her? You said, "Don't worry, it won't be long before you have somebody to whom she will be grandma, and you can get out of it gracefully by calling her grandma, too." Isn't it queer to think that I through my motherhood shall place you in the grandmother generation? As I look back to Cloverton days and my grandmothe

Wednesday, April fourteenth. Mother: This afternoon I sent Socrates to the station with the buggy (the word is not misused—we have a real American one). Herbert was to return by the afternoon train. An hour later, Socrates came back alone and told me that "bad things" were happening in Adana. There was a massacre starting. Yesterday four Armenian women were killed. This morning there was killing begun in vineyards just outside of the town. While he was telling me this news, a telegram mercifully

Tarsus,   Saturday,   April seventeenth,   Sometime in the morning. Mother dear: Once that wind changed, we slept. Mary and I slept from one to three. Baby Rogers is a good little chap. Yes, my dear, "I laid me down and slept. I awaked, for the Lord sustained me." This is the way to learn a text—live it. When we got awake, it was daylight. Shouting again at the gate. I ran to my study window that looks down into the street outside of the gate. Excited men were pushing and struggling. Their cries

Tarsus, April twenty-second. Dearest Mother: I have been sewing and helping care for the wounded. Mrs. Christie gave me the first Relief money that came, a Turkish gold-piece, worth four dollars and forty cents. With it I bought a roll of flannel. On Jeanne's balcony I fixed a hand-run sewing machine. There I basked in the sunshine as I worked on baby night-gowns all day Sunday. When I tell you that I made twelve nighties in a day you know the machine did speed-work. Our caldrons are all in use

Mersina,   April twenty-fifth. Mother dear: I wish you knew right now that we are at the Dodds in Mersina. It would relieve your mind of anxiety that must be weighing on you. But we cannot send an optimistic, reassuring cablegram. In the first place it would not be true. Then no message must go out whose chance publication in the newspapers would tend to make the world believe that danger here is passed. The Powers might relax what diplomatic pressure they are exercising at Constantinople—might

May twenty-seventh. Granny Dear: "The force of example" was a dry old phrase to me not longer than twenty-one days ago. But since Scrappie's coming has moved the generations in our family back one whole cog, I have been thinking about that phrase as something vital. If I continue to call you "Mother," Scrappie will call you that. Must I also begin now to call Herbert "father"—move him back a generation, too? I feel as if I had always had Scrappie. We are not yet at the end of May. But April seem