Sing a song of those who weep
    While slow the weary night hours go;
  Wondering if God willed it so,
    That human life should be so cheap!

  Sing a song of those who wait,
    Wondering what the post will bring;
  Saddened when he slights the gate,
    Trembling at his ring,—­

  The day the British mail comes in
  Is a day of thrills for the Next of Kin.

When the Alpine climbers make a dangerous ascent, they fasten a rope from one to the other; so that if one slips, the others will be able to hold him until he finds his feet again; and thus many a catastrophe is averted!  We have a ring like that here—­we whose boys are gone.  Somebody is almost sure to get a letter when the British mail comes in; and even a letter from another boy read over the ’phone is cheering, especially if he mentions your boy—­or even if he doesn’t; for we tell each other that the writer of the letter would surely know “if anything had happened.”

Even “Posty” does his best to cheer us when the letters are far apart, and when the British mail has brought us nothing tells us it was a very small, and, he is sure, divided mail, and the other part of it will be along to-morrow.  He also tells us the U-boats are probably accounting for the scarcity of French mail, anyway, and we must not be worried.  He is a good fellow, this “Posty”!

We hold tight to every thread of comfort—­we have to.  That’s why we wear bright-colored clothes:  there is a buoyancy, an assurance about them, that we sorely need!  We try to economize on our emotions, too, never shedding a useless or idle tear!  In the days of peace we could afford to go to see “East Lynne,” “Madame X,” or “Romeo and Juliet,” and cry our eyes red over their sorrows.  Now we must go easy on all that!  Some of us are running on the emergency tank now, and there is still a long way to go!

There are some things we try not to think about, especially at night.  There is no use—­we have thought it all over and over again; and now our brains act like machines which have been used for sewing something too heavy for them, and which don’t “feed” just right, and skip stitches.  So we try to do the things that we think ought to be done, and take all the enjoyment we can from the day’s work.

We have learned to divide our time into day-lengths, following the plan of the water-tight compartments in ships, which are so arranged that, if a leak occurs in one of these, the damaged one may be closed up, and no harm is done to the ship.  So it is in life.  We can live so completely one day at a time that no mournful yesterday can throw its dull shadow on the sunshine of to-day; neither can any frowning to-morrow reach back and with a black hand slap its smiling face.  To-day is a sacred thing if we know how to live it.