SNAPSHOTS OF THE YOUNG EGOTIST

Amory spent nearly two years in Minneapolis. The first winter he wore

moccasins that were born yellow, but after many applications of oil and

dirt assumed their mature color, a dirty, greenish brown; he wore a gray

plaid mackinaw coat, and a red toboggan cap. His dog, Count Del Monte,

ate the red cap, so his uncle gave him a gray one that pulled down over

his face. The trouble with this one was that you breathed into it and

your breath froze; one day the darn thing froze his cheek. He rubbed

snow on his cheek, but it turned bluish-black just the same.

*****

The Count Del Monte ate a box of bluing once, but it didn't hurt him.

Later, however, he lost his mind and ran madly up the street, bumping

into fences, rolling in gutters, and pursuing his eccentric course out

of Amory's life. Amory cried on his bed.

"Poor little Count," he cried. "Oh, _poor_ little _Count!_"

After several months he suspected Count of a fine piece of emotional

acting.

*****

Amory and Frog Parker considered that the greatest line in literature

occurred in Act III of "Arsene Lupin."

They sat in the first row at the Wednesday and Saturday matinees. The

line was:

"If one can't be a great artist or a great soldier, the next best thing

is to be a great criminal."

*****

Amory fell in love again, and wrote a poem. This was it:

"Marylyn and Sallee,

Those are the girls for me.

Marylyn stands above

Sallee in that sweet, deep love."

He was interested in whether McGovern of Minnesota would make the

first or second All-American, how to do the card-pass, how to do

the coin-pass, chameleon ties, how babies were born, and whether

Three-fingered Brown was really a better pitcher than Christie

Mathewson.

Among other things he read: "For the Honor of the School," "Little

Women" (twice), "The Common Law," "Sapho," "Dangerous Dan McGrew," "The

Broad Highway" (three times), "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Three

Weeks," "Mary Ware, the Little Colonel's Chum," "Gunga Din," The Police

Gazette, and Jim-Jam Jems.

He had all the Henty biasses in history, and was particularly fond of

the cheerful murder stories of Mary Roberts Rinehart.

*****

School ruined his French and gave him a distaste for standard authors.

His masters considered him idle, unreliable and superficially clever.

*****

He collected locks of hair from many girls. He wore the rings of

several. Finally he could borrow no more rings, owing to his nervous

habit of chewing them out of shape. This, it seemed, usually aroused the

jealous suspicions of the next borrower.

*****

All through the summer months Amory and Frog Parker went each week to

the Stock Company. Afterward they would stroll home in the balmy air of

August night, dreaming along Hennepin and Nicollet Avenues, through the

gay crowd. Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a

boy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him

and ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of

expressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the asphalts of

fourteen.

Always, after he was in bed, there were voices--indefinite, fading,

enchanting--just outside his window, and before he fell asleep he would

dream one of his favorite waking dreams, the one about becoming a great

half-back, or the one about the Japanese invasion, when he was rewarded

by being made the youngest general in the world. It was always

the becoming he dreamed of, never the being. This, too, was quite

characteristic of Amory.

*****

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 713