Dart’s letter begins on a high note, but fades into melancholy by the end.

For openers, he tells Dot of the surprise he had last night when the “passengers” were allowed to sit up on deck after dark. The brilliant half moon nearly dowsed the stars, but the sky was beautiful, nonetheless. The ships surrounding Dart’s were barely discernible shapes that appeared only after the boys’ eyes grew accustomed to the blackness.  As Dart leaned on the rail and gazed into the inky water, he could only wish that Dot was there beside him, enjoying the splendor and beauty of the night time sea.

While he enjoys seeing the beauty of this part of the Earth, he says “As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be satisfied after the war if I can stay within the limits of the State of Ohio for most of the rest of my days.” Well, he and Mom ended up traveling to Europe a few times, New Hampshire nearly every summer, and much of the rest of the USA for business or pleasure, but he did manage to live in his beloved Ohio for the rest of his life.

At one point in the letter, he had to scratch out a couple of words in the paragraph. The reason for his break in concentration was the cause of his surly mood for the remainder of the letter. A rowdy group of Marines swiped his prized lifebelt as he turned his back to get a drink of water. Then he found one of them sitting on his seabag which was full of clean clothes, ink bottle and precious photographs. “If those thugs don’t get some of that rudeness taken out of them before they’re discharged, there’ll be a whole new law enforcement problem after the war.” He suspects none of what he writes about the Marines will get past the censor, but every word comes through in tact. Maybe the censor shared Dart’s opinion of the “rowdy thugs.”

He finished up this letter the following day after discovering that some other things had been stolen from him by the dirty poachers. The greatest loss was a large map of the Pacific that his folks had given him.

He reports that he and the other Peterson from his class at Treasure Island spent most of last night up on deck talking about education, machinery and two women named Dorothy. If you recall, Pete is married to a Dorothy and he seems to miss her as much as Dart misses Dot.

“I’m getting anxious to get all my 25 months of liability to the Navy ended, and get some of that training into use. From all the way out here it seems so futile to keep telling you how much I love you, but I’ll keep telling you anyway.”

Dot begins her letter with a vow that it’ll be a long one, in spite of the fact that there is no news so she’ll have to fill it with useless chatter.

She awoke this morning feeling like “the fag end of a mis-spent life.” She explains “My right arm aches from all the bowling I did over the weekend. My left arm aches from opening the heavy elevator door. And my legs ache to keep my arms company. An extremely sad case!”

She reports that they are not having as much weather as they had last week, but it’s always doing something outside. (Now that must be the epitome of a nonsense sentence!)

Exactly three weeks from yesterday, she’ll receive her masters degree from Andrews School for Girls. “What I should have said was that I get the 3rd degree from the Master of the school – a very different situation but one to which I have become accustomed.”

Another nonsensical paragraph follows about her falling into the swimming pool yesterday and discovering that the water is much wetter when one has her clothes on. She adds a goofy limerick about a maiden named Dot who love a boy named Dart. She pauses to think of other silliness to fill the pages and follows that with a giant underlined “I love you!”

Here, the letter abruptly stops after only two pages. There’s no signature, and certainly not enough material to constitute the long letter she promised, so I guess the rest of this masterpiece must have been lost. Well, she was right about one thing – there is absolutely nothing new to report so she had to fill the letter with useless chatter. (I’ll venture a guess that Dart is as happy to receive her useless chatter as he would be to read the great American novel.)