[November 12, 1915]

Friday, 8.45 A.M. (In Bed)

I am writing this while they are cleaning up the ward. All the beds are moved around, floor polished, your little table washed — everything made spotless under the watchful eye of Sister. This is done every morning, and when all is shipshape and peaceful again, the doctor comes around. Most of us read. One man makes wire and bead butterflies, which visitors buy off him. Some are not well enough to do anything but lie and doze all day. It’s very clean, peaceful and — yes — I guess it is rather nice. The fact is, I feel so awfully fit, I could push a ’bus over with one hand. Yet this morning I am going to have my first electric bath. The boys who have had them say they are rather nice.

It’s a regular old London November fog outside, yellow, soapy. Yet, somehow, London — and fascinating. It sneaks through the cracks in the windows, under the doors, everywhere. Dear old, dirty London! I am sick of her. — Yes. But from the ends of the earth I have to come back, and again back. She’s irresistible.

Yet I hate the very sound of the English accent. I am absolutely an American in all the word stands for. I don’t like the English — But — There it is — Just this one town has “got me” and will always have, as it has all Englishmen who have lived here, from the North Pole to the South. Just give me a steerage ticket across the Atlantic, and without a cent I would fairly run on board. . . .