College stories, American; Princeton (N.J.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Princeton University -- Fiction
Of course it did get out, as all such things do; but Valliant was not
bothered again by sophomores, though he ought to have been hazed up
and down and inside-out and cross-wise by the whole college.
You can see him if you attend the next production of the Dramatic
Association.
HERO WORSHIP
Near Old Chapel he used to linger on the way from recitations, buying
things from old black Jimmie and pretending to be amused by his
stuttering conversation while he watched the passers-by. And when The
One came along for whom he waited, he said to himself, "Oh, he's
wearing his brown shooting-coat to-day," and turned and gazed after
him until out of sight, wondering what lecture he had at that hour and
how he would get along at it. Then passing on slowly across the campus
he turned out upon the street.
When he reached his room, Darnell said to another freshman that lived
in the house, "I saw Lawrence to-day. He was walking with his arm
around Nolan. He passed right by me." And he could also have told just
how he nodded to the fellows along the walk and how he swung his legs.
Darnell thought that Lawrence's gait was just right. So was his manner
of dressing. Somehow Darnell could not make his corduroy coat hang in
that way. It lay back all right, but it would not stay snugly up on
his shoulders as Lawrence's did.
He used to see him quite often now, for by this time he had learned at
what hours Lawrence's lectures came. Which was more than the senior
himself knew, for he had always to look at the schedule tacked up on
the back of the door over the faculty and absence committee summonses.
Darnell remembered the first time he saw Lawrence. It was on the
morning of the first day of the term, while he was sitting in the
office of the old Nassau Hotel, quietly waiting for his mother and
trying not to appear green and thinking that everyone who came in was
a sophomore and wanted him. It was raining, he remembered, and people
came scurrying in with their trousers turned up and mackintoshes on.
Lawrence came in alone.
He came with his impressive stride and a very long paddock coat and a
new kind of shooting-cap which he brought back with him from
Piccadilly the first of the month. He frowned and glanced about the
room. And when he found the two faces he was looking for and strode
across to where a worried-faced gentleman in a silk hat was reading
the paper beside a freshman with a grinning face, he said, holding
out his hand, "So you have arrived." It was just the patrician tone
of voice that Darnell had expected when he saw the face.
When Lawrence stretched out his hand his long coat fell open and
disclosed an orange monogram of many closely intertwined letters
shining against the black of his undercoat. It was worked upon the
breast-pocket, and the freshman wondered what that mysterious insignia
might mean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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