Queen of the Adriatic. Although I’ve never seen it I feel about it just as Byron did—I’ve always loved it—it has always been to me ‘a fairy city of the heart.’ Perhaps I caught my love of it from Walter, who worshipped it. It was always one of his dreams to see Venice. I remember we planned once—down in Rainbow Valley one evening just before the war broke out—that some time we would go together to see it and float in a gondola through its moonlit streets.
“Every fall since the war began there has been some terrible blow to our troops,—Antwerp in 1914, Serbia in 1915; last fall, Roumania, and now Italy, the worst of all. I think I would give up in despair if it were not for what Walter said in his dear last letter—that ‘the dead as well as the living were fighting on our side and such an army cannot be defeated.’ No, it cannot. We will win in the end. I will not doubt it for one moment. To let myself doubt would be to ‘break faith.’
“We have all been campaigning furiously of late for the new Victory Loan. We Junior Reds canvassed diligently and landed several tough old customers who had at first flatly refused to invest. I—even I—tackled Whiskers-on-the-moon. I expected a bad time and a refusal. But to my amazement he was quite agreeable and promised on the spot to take a thousand dollar bond. He may be a pacifist, but he knows a good investment when it is handed out to him. Five and a half per cent. is five and half per cent. even when a militaristic government pays it.
“Father, to tease Susan, says it was her speech at the Victory Loan Campaign meeting that converted Mr. Pryor. I don’t think that at all likely, since Mr.
