This is what he wrote:
"Darling Anna,
Yesterday and to-day (a Censor's erasure) I feel depressed and think
of you, only of you. When things are quiet and there is little doing
many a fine thing passes unobserved; I allude to the flowers, of
which I am sending you specimens. They grow quite close to the
trench, but it is difficult and dangerous to get them, as one may
easily be killed. I have seen such flowers before, but am ignorant of
their name."
"Goodbye. My love. Forgive the 'army style'; this letter is for you
alone."
The letter contained two of those little blue violets which spring up
directly the snow has melted.
I handed the letter, as always, to his mother that she might read it
too; her lips began to tremble, and her eyes filled with tears as she
read, but in the midst of her tears she laughed. And we both of us, I
the young woman, and Mammy the old mother, laughed and cried
simultaneously, tightly clasped in each other's arms. I had pictured
the War hitherto in the words: "Towny, bayonet me!". And now
Alexander had sent me from it--violets! Two violets that are still
unfaded.
I had noticed before the phenomenon of the four seasons suddenly
bursting, as it were, upon the human consciousness. I remember that
happening to me in my childhood when on holiday in the country. The
summer was still in full swing, everything seemed just as usual, when
suddenly one morning, in a most ordinary gust of wind, the red-vine
leaves, then some three weeks old, were blown into my eyes, and all
at once I realized that it was autumn.
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