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 , Rumania , 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 can not be defeated . ' No it can not . 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 finve and a 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 do n't think that at all likely , since Mr. Pryor has been publicly very bitter against Susan ever since her quite unmistakable rejection of his lover-like advances . But Susan did make a speech -- and the best one made at the meeting , too .
It was the XXXXX time she ever did such a thing and she vows it will be the last .
Father Reds Venice Walter Whiskers-on-the-moon dollar fall first gondola war