A story teller's story : $b The tale of an American writer's journey through his own imaginative world and through the world of facts, with many of his experiences and impressions among other writersAnderson, Sherwood
General
A story teller's story : $b The tale of an American writer's journey through his own imaginative world and through the world of facts, with many of his experiences and impressions among other writers
Anderson, Sherwood
Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941; Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography
And then during his second year something happened. There was a young
man in one of the upper classes, an athlete of note but at the same
time an earnest student, toward whom the Ohio boy’s fancy now turned.
It was an entirely sentimental affair, as the man afterward explained
and might have done him no harm had he been content never to give it
any kind of expression.
He did however near the end of his second year try to give it
expression. For weeks he had been going about, much like a young girl
in love, thinking constantly of the athlete, of his splendid rugged
figure, fine eyes and quick active mind and of how wonderful it would
be if he could have an intimate friendship with such a fellow. He
dreamed of walks the two might take together in the evenings under the
elms that grew on the campus. “I thought he would take my arm or I
would take his and we would walk and talk,” Judge Turner said, and I
remember that as he spoke he got out of his chair and walked about the
room and that his small white hands played nervously over the front of
his coat. He seemed not to want to face me as he told the more vital
part of his tale but going behind my chair walked up and down the room
at my back, and I remember how, although I was then but a boy, I knew
he suffered and wanted to put his arms about me as he talked but did
not dare. My own heart was filled with sadness so that unknown perhaps
to him tears came in my eyes and what part of his tragedy and his words
I did not understand I am sure I did dimly sense the meaning of.
He had, it happened, gone about for months thinking of the older fellow
of his college as one much like himself but blessed with a stronger
body, greater ability to make his way in the world and no doubt also
wanting to give something of himself, or something beautiful outside
himself that would represent some spirit of himself, to another man.
Once young Turner went to a near-by city and spent a whole afternoon
going from shop to shop trying to find some bit of jewelry, a painting
or something of the sort he himself thought lovely and that would be
within the limits of his own slender means that he might in secret
send to the man he so admired.
“For women I did not care,” the judge said huskily. “To tell the truth
I was afraid of women. In a relationship made with a woman one, I
thought, risked too much. It might be quite altogether perfect or it
might be just nothing at all. To tell the truth I did not then have
and never have had enough assurance of fineness in myself to make it
possible for me to approach a woman with the object of becoming her
lover and I was not then and never have been a strong lustful man and I
had, even at that time, put all thought of anything very definite ever
happening between myself and a woman utterly aside.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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