joker  and  full  of  fun,  he  keeps  us  laughing  at  his  antics.  He 
is  also  very  original  and  most  inde  endent.  Everett  is  only 
just  begining  to  try  to  walk  and  I  have  been  away  so  much 
that  I  feel  as  if  I  did  not  know  him  as  well  as  the  rest.  He 
is  a  bouncer  and  seems  to  be  a  mixture  of  the  qualities  of 
both  his  brothers. 
They  have  no  bad  qualities  whatsoever. 
You  are  wondering  what  I  am  doing  down  here  in  Virginia. 
Well,  you  may  remember  that  I  have  been  in  the  National  Guard 
Coast  Artillery  since  I  left  college.  When  war  broke  out  I 
was  captain  of  one  of  our  local  companies  and  went  with  my 
regiment  rub  to  the  coast  defenses  of  Long  Island  Sound  at  a 
post  but  a  few  hours  ride  from  home.  Then  they  took  most  of 
my  company  to  form  a  heavy  field  artillery  battery  and  sent  me 
doen  here  to  study  artillery.  There  is  a  big  school  here  known 
&b  the  Coast  Artillery  School  and  it  is  very  fine  although 
we  are  studying  more  field  artillery  than  coast  artillery. 
I  ^  expecting  to  go  to  Prance  sometime  or  other,  goodness 
Snly  knows  when  as  I  have  no  assignment  at  present.  I  shall  be 
here  until  about  the  22na.  of  this  month  when  I  will  return  to 
Port  Terry,  N.Y.  opposite  New  London,  Conn  where  my  former 
station  was. 
I  put  in  some  strenuous  days  at  Port  Terry  before  coming 
here,  especialy  through  December.  We  were  very  poorly  housed 
and  the  post  was  a  bleak  and  desolate  one  where* all  the  winds 
of  Heaven  met  and  fought  it  out  together.  It  did  us  no  harm 
however  and  may  perhaps  serve  as  a  preparation  for  new  endevors. 
Of  course,  the  wa r  is  the  chief  topic  these  days  and  we 
are  living  in  an  age  of  big  things.  The  news  from  Austria  at 
present  is  most  interesting  and  shows  that  the  breaking  point 
is  rapidly  beeing  reached  where  either  the  soverign  will  have 
to  make  the  best  peace  he  can  or  else  he  may  find  himself  out 
of  a  job  like  Nicholas  is.  Germany  is  very  hard  pushed  at  present 
but  not  yet  beateib.  Her  191$  class  has  been  in  service  some  time 
ana  the  1919  class  goes  in  next  month.  Think  of  it  boys  of 
1o  and.  17.  Since  the  war  began  Germany  al^on^has  lost  in 
killed,  wounded  and  missing,  not  including  wounded,  who  have 
returned  to  the  front,  7,630,000  men  and  has  580,000  now  in 
depots  and  non-combatant  occupations  in  the  rear,  these  latter 
are  men  too  seriously  wounded  to  be  of  any  use  as  fighting  men. 
These  figures  are  official. 
Down  here  at  Monroe  it  seems  funny  to  see  the  old  civil 
war  cannon  around.  Of  course  they  are  only  used  for  ornaments 
but  the  old  easem^ates  where  they  were  set  up  when  the  Monitor 
and  Merrimac  fought  it  out,  are  still  intact  and  they  could 
put  them  right  back  again  if  they  wanted  to.  In  one  of  these 
casemates  the  kept  Jeff  Davis  after  Lee  surrendered.  I  have  been 
in  there  ana,,  he  must  have  had  a  very  circumscribed  existence 
for  the  twos/years  until  Horace  Greeley  went  his  bond.  My 
grandmother  Poord  was  down  here  a  year  during  the  war  nursing 
