`` If he had done his duty and gone into the war long ago we should not have seen this mess in Serbia , '' she avowed . `` It would be a serious thing to plunge a great country like the United States , with its mixed population , into the war , Susan , '' said the doctor , who sometimes came to the defence of the President , not because he thought Wilson needed it especially , but from an unholy love of baiting Susan . `` Maybe , doctor dear -- maybe ! But that makes me think of the old story of the girl who told her grandmother she was going to be married . ` It is a solemn thing to be married , ' said the old lady . ` Yes , but it is a solemner thing not to be , ' said the girl . And I can testify to that out of my own experience , doctor dear . And I think it is a solemner thing for the Yankees that they have kept out of the war than it would have been if they had gone into it . However , though I do not know much about them , I am of the opinion that we will see them starting something yet , Woodrow Wilson or no Woodrow Wilson , when they get it into their heads that this war is not a correspondence school . They will not , '' said Susan , energetically waving a saucepan with one hand and a soup ladle with the other , `` be too proud to fight then . '' On a pale-yellow , windy evening in October Carl Meredith went away . He had enlisted on his eighteenth birthday . John Meredith saw him off with a set face . His two boys were gone -- there was only little Bruce left now . He loved Bruce and Bruce 's mother dearly ; but Jerry and Carl were the sons of the bride of his youth and Carl was the only one of all his children who had Cecilia 's very eyes . As they looked lovingly out at him above Carl 's uniform the pale minister suddenly remembered the day when for the first and last time he had tried to whip Carl for his prank with the eel . That was the first time he had realised how much Carl 's eyes were like Cecilia 's . Now he realised it again once more . Would he ever again see his dead wife 's eyes looking at him from his son 's face ? What a bonny , clean , handsome lad he was !
It was -- hard -- XXXXX see him go .
As If On about at in into of though to