And all the while this earth-rocking diapason continues more terrible, more majestic than any real thunder I ever heard.
We have had luncheon and are going on. He drank five quarts of Belgian beer! I am permitted a few minutes more and he orders the sixth quart. This is what I have to say:
In case anything should go wrong with me give the enclosed note to my mother. Please see to it that everything I have goes to her. My will is in my box in our safe at the office. It is all quite clear. There should be no trouble.
I expressed my trunk to your care in Luxembourg. You wrote me that you had received it and placed it in storage to await my leisurely arrival. In case of accident to me send it to my mother.
About the business, my share in any deals now on should go to my brother. After that if you care to take George in when he comes out of Harvard it would gratify his mother and me.
He's all to the good, you know. But don't do this if the business does not warrant it. Don't do it out of sentiment, Harry. If he promises to be of use, and if you have no other man in view, and if, as I say, business conditions warrant such an association with a view to eventual partnership, then if you care to take in George it will be all right.
He has sufficient capital, as you know. He lacks only the business experience. And he is intelligent and quick and it won't take him long.
But if you prefer somebody else don't hesitate. George is perfectly able to take care of his mother and himself.
This is all, I think. I'm sorry about the August fishing on the Black Erenz. It is a lovely stream and full of trout. All Luxembourg is lovely; it is a story-book country--a real land of romance. I wish I might have seen it again. Never were such forests, such silver streams, such golden glades, such wild-flowers--never such hills, such meadows, such skies.
Well--if I come back to you, I come back. If not--good-bye, old fellow--with all it implies between friends of many years.
Say to your kind friends, the Courlands, who so graciously invited you to bring me with you to Lesse Forest, that I shall not be able to accept their delightful hospitality, and that my inability to do so must remain to me a regret as long as I live. (These guns are thundering enough to crack the very sky! I really wish I could hear some band playing "Tipperary.")