s. Bernd will see that my things
get sent on, I expect. I locked everything up in my trunk,--your
letters, and all my precious things. An official came along the train
at Wittenberg, and after eyeing us all in my compartment suddenly held
out his hand to me and said, "_Ihre Papiere_." As I haven't got any I
told him about being an American, and as much family history not till
then known to me as I could put into German. The other passengers
listened eagerly, but not unfriendly. I think if you're a woman, not
being old helps one in Germany.

Now I'm going to get some hot coffee, for it has turned cold, I think,
and post this. The one thing in life now that seems of desperate
importance is to get to you. Oh, little mother, the moment when I
reach you! It will be like getting to heaven, like getting at last,
after many wanderings, and batterings, to the feet of God.

We _ought_ to be at Waldshut, on the frontier, tomorrow morning, but
nobody can say for certain, because we may be held up for hours
anywhere on the way.

Your Chris.

It's a good thing being too tired to think.

_Wursburg, Thursday, August 6th, 1914, 4 p. m_.

I've only got as far as this. I was held up this time, not the train.
It went on without me. Well, it doesn't matter really; it only keeps
me a little longer from you.

We stopped here about ten o'clock this morning, and I was so tired and
stiff after the long night wedged in tight in the railway carriage that
I got out to get some air and unstiffen myself, instinctively clutching
my fiddle-case; and a Bavarian officer on the platform, watching the
train with some soldiers, saw me and came over to me at once and
demanded to see my papers.

"You are English," he said; and when I said I was American he made a
sound like Tcha.

I can't tell you how horrid he was. He kept me standing for two hours
in the blazing sun. You can imagine what I felt like when I saw my
train going away without me. I asked if I mightn't go into the shade,
into the waiting-room, anywhere out of the terrible sun, for I was
positively dripping after the first half hour of it, and his answer to
that and to anything else I said in protest was always the same:
"_Krieg ist Krieg. Mund halten_."

There was no _reason_ why I shouldn't be in the shade, except that he
had power to prevent it. Well, he was very young, and I don't suppose
had ever had so much power before, so I suppose it was natural, he