aw I have no complaint on her outside of her wearing my
dress-pumps, this one time she is dead wrong. Soldiers are not always
acrobats and they do need to smoke and your Ma will put herself in the
small-time reform class if she dont look out. When I think of the stuff
I seen up and down Broadway and elsewhere in my days which could be
reformed and no one miss it, I get hot when I hear this talk about
keeping the army pure. Take it or leave it, but the truth is the Huns
has kept us pure alright--they sweat all the wickedness out of us
running after them.

But to get back to the tobacco stuff. Dont let nothing hinder you from
bothering everybody you see to send smokes. We'll use 'em up never fear!
And if you was to be walking down the Avenue or mebbe Broadway sometime
and a box in your hand and asking for Smoke Funds or something whichever
way its done--and your Ma was to fight her way through the howling mob
which would undoubtedly be surrounding you on account of course the best
known parlor-dancing act in America and the world wouldn't walk out
looking for funds and not draw a mob which was only too glad to see you
for five cents in the smoke-fund-box instead of two dollars in the box
office--well, anyways, if your Ma was to force her way through this mob
which with her weight she could do easily, why she would forgive you in
the end if not right there on the street, and I believe that a
hand-organ would start and play hearts and flowers at that.

Anyways, keep up the good work only never mind the monograms as long as
they taste like tobacco and can be lit. And if you fall out with Ma just
tell her this story which I will tell you and she will see mebbe God
didn't put tobacco in the world merely for little slum children to pluck
on their two weeks vacation in all its green beauty.

Well, the story is like this sweetie, and I will write it as good as I
can and if it seems comicle go ahead and get a good laugh only take it
or leave it, it was no comedy at the time. But if you was to news it
around mebbe the folks at home would start dropping something beside
coppers in them soda-fountain boxes you was talking about, and commence
trying to squeeze a quarter through the slot now and again. Come to
think of it, the biggest thing a copper penny can buy is the feeling a
person gets from dropping one in a Belgium milk bottle or home for
crippled children or Merry Xmas for the Salvation Army. You know the
cheap chest it gives