The country papers gave a more personal tone to their war articles than did the city papers. These latter seemed to think that a war is got up especially for the officers. Doubtless they were about right.
After a while, the First went to Cuba. The regiment got there too late for active fighting in the operations about Santiago, but not too late for duty in the trenches, with their freshly upturned earth, damp and saturated with malaria. Nor did they get there too late for the fever. Many of them contracted it, and some died of it. I used to read the lists of the sick and dead, to see if the names of any of my wife's acquaintances in the field, line or staff, were among them.
Once in a while I would observe that some young soldier had died of something or other and homesickness. One morning I happened upon a name that impressed me as being familiar. After studying it a while, I finally recognized it as the same name that had been upon the law license that was framed in oak and hanging above the desk of the office boy. There was printed after the name:
"Pernicious malaria and nostalgia."
