Marcus Thorn, instructor in Harvard University, was thirty-two years old on the twentieth of June. He looked thirty-five, and felt about a hundred. When he got out of bed on his birthday morning, and pattered into the vestibule for his mail, the date at the top of the Crimson recalled the first of these unpleasant truths to him. His mirror--it was one of those detestable folding mirrors in three sections--enabled him to examine his bald spot with pitiless ease, reproduced his profile some forty-five times in quick succession, and made it possible for him to see all the way round himself several times at once. It was this devilish invention that revealed fact number two to Mr. Thorn, while he was brushing his hair and tying his necktie. One plus two equalled three, as usual, and Thorn felt old and unhappy. But he didn’t linger over his dressing to philosophise on the evanescence of youth; he didn’t even murmur,-- “Alas for hourly change! Alas for all The loves that from his hand proud youth lets fall, Even as the beads of a told rosary.” He could do that sort of thing very well; he had been doing it steadily for five months. But this morning, the reality of the situation--impressed upon him by the date of his birth--led him to adopt more practical measures. What he actually did, was to disarrange his hair a little on top,--fluff it up to make it look more,--and press it down toward his temples to remove the appearance of having too much complexion for the size of his head. Then he went out to breakfast. Thorn’s birthday had fallen, ironically, on one of those rainwashed, blue-and-gold days when “all nature rejoices.” The whitest of clouds were drifting across the bluest of skies when the instructor walked out into the Yard; the elms rustled gently in the delicate June haze, and the robins hopped across the yellow paths, freshly sanded, and screamed in the sparkling grass. All nature rejoiced, and in so doing got very much on Thorn’s nerves. When he reached his club, he was a most excellent person not to breakfast with.