FOREVER. Wednesday December 9th 1914 Clear & calm - 8°s I really am undecided just what I ought to write for this day. After midnight yesterday I studied until 4 o’c this morning. I was about to eat a dish of prunes before turning in when I heard a great commotion outside, a confusion of cries and howls which made me think that a pack of wolves had descended upon us from the black hills. Of course it was the Etah pack, the Vanguard, it turned out, & Hal and Joe. Jerome woke up and we had a round of prunes followed by a talk before our open fire (as we call our stove with its door open.) When the visitors left I wrote some short hand to settle my mind. Unluckily this tranquility was ruined by a book upon which I chanced as I put my “Gregg’s Method” on the shelf. The disturber of my peace was a detective story, the second I have seen since our arrival. I read the first page, the first chapter. And then in my weakness I ran breathless & thrilled, but withal highly aroused, thru more than four hundred bloody pages of plot and counter plot, revenge, misery, life, death, and - of course - love, followed by happiness over after. I did not get to bed until noon today; but I am not sorry. Such excitement is a blessing and we have pathetically little variation to our life out here. When I finished the book I dragged from poor his algebra and set him upon the trail of the murderer. I think he pursued it all day long.