I confess that, red-blooded, hob-raising kid that I was, the sweet melancholy of the lines, as Nathan read them, “got” me. Often I found myself watching my friend, at a loss to understand him. The other day while searching among the compartments in an old wallet, I came upon a folded, time-yellowed sheet of foolscap on which some verses had once been penned in a youthful but symmetrical hand. It was a poem which Nathan composed back in those years before he had “found” himself. These are sample lines of what this sixteen-year-old was producing: DAY DREAMS “Somewhere over the miles, dear heart, Off over a turquoise sea, There’s a pleasant isle that is set apart For your rendezvous with me. There’ll be never a cloud in its skies, dear heart, And the days will be always fair, For free as the summer winds that blow We will live in our Eden there, Somewhere! “There’ll be no more heartache to spoil our dreams, There’ll be no more griefs to grieve, We’ll wander down eons of golden years Through the vales of Make-Believe. And I’ll drink of your lips, your eyes, your arms, Till I’m drunk with their beauty rare, And you’ll nestle me down till my stupor goes, On a bed of your glorious hair. Somewhere! “The wealth of the earth and the sun shall be ours, We shall know neither pride nor shame Nor ever grow weary of too much romance Nor spoil our sweet isle with a name. And no one shall find our rendezvous, No world break the spell with its blare, For that will be Heaven—just you and I, With no one to part us or care. Somewhere!” I submit this poem for what it is worth. The meter undoubtedly might be improved. Yet it shows the way the lad’s mind was leaning, the romancer, the idealist, the colorist, the emotionalist, always. Johnathan Forge viewed a certain change in his son with satisfaction. “Thank God,” he cried, “I’ve broken that boy’s false pride at last. Now maybe he’ll get solid ground under his feet and amount to something.” III Yet one noontime in the October which followed, Nathan so deported himself in a certain pugilistic situation that the matter of broken pride was left open to reasonable doubt.