Dart wrote a complicated opening sentence about calling home, missing his mother who was visiting Aunt Flora, and planning a second call so that he could tell his mother good-bye. Then he writes, “If you’d count the commas in that sentence, you’d find more than the average English instructor could stand.” He goes on to have a little fun with the following sentence. “But you, not being one, and I, not being one, either, can see no fault, at all, in the use of five, six, seven, or eight commas in a single sentence, can we?”

How I love that paragraph! It reminds me of how much fun my father had with language – from soaring, poetic vocabulary to the absurd use of punctuation, sometimes at the expense of overly zealous English teachers.

He writes that his Aunt Flora has been quite ill with heart problems which are exacerbated by cold weather.

Tonight marks the beginning of his third month on the John R Craig. If the same moon as appears tonight can be seen on Saturday, there will be a ship full of homesick boys watching it.

“I wish there were something I could say on this occasion. I hate making ‘small talk’ in a letter when I should be writing of all the love I have for you, my Darling. The feeling I have now is the hopeless feeling I used to have at Ulithi, when I’d be writing one of the last letters of a stay in port. It’s the feeling that I’d like to be with you now, and not leaving.”

There’s a big difference, though, between then and now because he and Dot are engaged! He marvels at how little value some people give to that word. But to him and his beloved, it means they have given each other a vow as precious as the one they will make as soon as it’s possible for them to marry. When people hear that they are engaged, he wonders if they can guess at how much love and tenderness and passion that represents? Can they know of the trust and the interests and the memories wrapped up in that state?

“Just time to say good night before the USO closes. I love you always and forever, my Darling.  – Your own fiance who is counting the days until he can be a good (he hopes) husband for you.”

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Dot got two letters from Dart today, which means none tomorrow. Maybe that’ll be good practice at hardening herself to the letterless days to come. “The longest time I ever had to endure without mail from you was fourteen days. That was just after you went overseas the first time. I remember how thrilled I was when your mom woke me up one morning by throwing a stack of fourteen letters on my bed. That happened while I was staying there at graduation time last year. It’s been almost a year to the day since you went overseas the first time. Even though we haven’t seen each other very much over the past year, lots has happened to us.”

She hopes the mail service will be better than he expects. She’ll continue to write daily, even though it is her opinion that her letters are never worthy of being preserved through the years. At least they might mean the difference between his name being called at mail call, and not.

She wonders how he could write about his “smooth sailing” aboard the Haggard. It seems to her as though he went through some pretty rough times on that old ship.

She assures him it won’t be long before he’s working on his trains again. She loves to watch him fiddle with those trains and that pile of differential gears he has. “In fact,  I love to watch you do anything, except talk without your teeth.”

Now that he’s gone, she wishes she were spending the weekend with his folks. But, it’s not a good idea to go there too often because she ends up wishing she could stay with them all the time.

It’s time for her to wrap this up and get some sleep. She has a physical science test tomorrow, but claims it’s almost useless for her to even go to class.

She loves him and urges him not to get seasick.