Viewing page 28 of 51

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

know that on that evening she was in the mood to have me make love to her. And she was a fine girl. I walked the mile or so home with her (she was spending the night with Jennie Williams) and merely bade her a friendly goodby at the gate. It was, I knew, a disappointment to her. But Billie was an unselfish, innocent and unsophisticated girl. i felt that I was being highly honorable and all that when I refrained from kissing her on that evening. Now I am not so sure that it was best for her. A little romance at the time, even though flagrantly deceitful on my part, might have saved her from her later fate. She eventually became a nun, an dis now (or was when last I heard of her) teaching at the St. Cecilia school for girls, in Nashville. Her parents, although not Catholic, sent her there to school in her girlhood because her older sister had been involved in a scandal and they wished to shield Bettie. Now they regret having allowed her to come into contact with Catholicism. Whether or not she has any regrets, probably none of her friends will ever know.
    I also went to Carthage during my brief leave. Of this visit I remember only walking, with Helen Fisher, in the fields back of her home, and of sitting with her in the parlor that evening. i do not remember saying goodbye either to her or to any one else at Carthage.
     It must have been the 23rd [[best guess]] of August 1917, when I left home. My baggage had been sent to Ashland City earlier in the day, I do not remember how. I remember kissing