“You can be as brave as millions of other childless wives all over America, able for a while to care for themselves. You told me once that you hated the Nieson blood in you even if your father was a soldier. You said after we were married that you were trying to pull yourself up and be somebody. You said you were happy because our kids would have Fuller blood in them. And now instead of coming up to the scratch in a real crisis, Betty, you’re showing yellow and groveling round like a Nieson. If I’m willing to run the chance of getting shot—” But he did not go on. Her screams of hysteria began. And the little wife who had stood so much broke down at last. Doctor Johnson was called. He attended the girl for eight days. During that time, only regard for Jack made the boys hold off in enlisting as a unit altogether for France. Doctor Johnson said that if Jack volunteered with them, and Betty heard he was going, the shock would kill her. So the boy went around town, torn between love and duty. And during those days something happened in our community. Wilbur Nieson and Henry Weston died—within a few days of one another. Henry Weston succumbed to kidney trouble which had afflicted him for years. And old Wilbur Nieson—Wilbur Nieson had the “tremors” as we say up here in New England—delirium tremens—one night in the rear of the Whitney House. The boys in the livery found him. The Sons of Veterans buried him. So much for the carefully cherished plans of humankind. For a half-century the members of Farrington Post had saved that rare old Vintage for “The Toast to Forty-five.” And there were not even two old soldiers left of that original company to observe the sentiment. “The Toast to Forty-five” could never be pledged, after all! A couple of weeks slipped away. August sixteenth approached. The boy came into the office of our little local paper one morning and said: “I’ve made up my mind; I’m going to France. Instead of having our ranks broken by the draft, all the ‘Fire-eaters’ are enlisting as a body in the National Guard. And I—am going—with them.” “But your wife?” “It won’t be any harder for her to stay behind than it is for me to leave. But I’ve got to get into this thing. Something inside of me is firing me to do it. She’ll bear it—somehow.” “When are you boys going?” asked Sam. “We’ll be leaving somewhere around the twentieth.” “The twentieth!” exclaimed Sam. In that moment something occurred to him. “The twentieth!” he exclaimed over again. “And on the sixteenth—the old army men were going to hold their last reunion if only those two hadn’t died. Jack—!” “Yes.” “Why not—why not—why not have Paris give you boys a royal send-off on that night—the night of the sixteenth—a dinner for you fellows the sixteenth; a dinner for you fellows in place of the old Grand Army reunion!” “I guess the boys would be willing,” replied Jack with a sad smile.