If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends - you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.

The story concludes as The Second World War commences and Alice Duer Miller worries that her son like his father will be killed fighting for the country he loves. Her great grandfather was William Alexander Duer who was the president of Columbia College 1829–1842. Secretary (1936).