You can take bromides and cure insomnia. You
can take chloroform, and enough of it will prevent seasickness, but
nothing avails for _Heimweh_. And like pride, "let him that thinketh
he standeth take heed lest he fall." I have been in the midst of an
animated, recital of how homesick I had been the day before,
ridiculing myself and my malady with unctuous freedom, when suddenly
Billy's little face would seem to rise out of the flowers on the
dinner-table, or the patter of his little flying feet as they used to
sound in my ear as he fluttered down the long hall to my study, or the
darling way he used to ran towards me when I held out my arms and
said, "Come, Billy, let Tattah show you the doves," with such an
expectant face, and that little scarlet mouth opened to kiss me--oh,
it is nothing to anybody else, but it is home to me, and I was only
recalled to London and my dinner party when a fresh attack was made on
America, and I was called once more to battle for my country.
I have "fought, bled, and died" for home and country more times than I
can count since I have been here.
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