The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of LifeLewis, Sinclair
General
The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
Lewis, Sinclair
City and town life -- Fiction; Minnesota -- Fiction
He had picked up a Yale catalogue and he vaguely ruffled its pages,
thinking of the difference between its range of courses and the petty
inflexible curriculum of Plato. Out of the pages leaped the name
"Frazer." He hastily turned back. There it was: "Henry Frazer, A.M.,
Ph.D., Assistant Professor in English Literature."
Carl rejoiced boyishly that, after his defeat at Plato, Professor
Frazer had won to victory. He forgot his own triumph. For a second he
longed to call on Frazer and pay his respects. "No," he growled to
himself, "I've been so busy hiking that I've forgotten what little
book-learnin' I ever had. I'd like to see him, but----By gum! I'm
going to begin studying again."
Hidden away in the youngster's bedroom for a nap, he dreamed
uncomfortably of Frazer and books. That did not keep him from making a
good altitude flight at the New Haven Meet that afternoon, with his
hastily repaired machine and a new propeller. But he thought of new
roads for wandering in the land of books, as he sat, tired and sleepy,
but trying to appear bright and appreciative, at the big dinner in his
honor--the first sacrificial banquet to which he had been
subjected--with earnest gentlemen in evening clothes, glad for an
excuse to drink just a little too much champagne; with mayors and
councilmen and bankers; with the inevitable stories about the man who
was accused of stealing umbrellas and about the two skunks on a fence
enviously watching a motor-car.
Equally inevitable were the speeches praising Carl's flight as a
"remarkable achievement, destined to live forever in the annals of
sport and heroism, and to bring one more glory to the name of our fair
city."
Carl tried to appear honored, but he was thinking: "Rats! I'll live in
the annals of nothin'! Curtiss and Brookins and Hoxsey have all made
longer flights than mine, in this country alone, and they're aviators
I'm not worthy to fill the gas-tanks of.... Gee! I'm sleepy! Got to
look polite, but I wish I could beat it.... Let's see. Now look here,
young Carl; starting in to-morrow, you begin to read oodles of books.
Let's see. I'll start out with Forrest's favorites. There's _David
Copperfield_, and that book by Wells, _Tono-Bungay_, that's got aerial
experiments in it, and _Jude the Ob--, Obscure_, I guess it is, and
_The Damnation of Theron Ware_ (wonder what he damned), and
_McTeague_, and _Walden_, and _War and Peace_, and _Madame Bovary_,
and some Turgenev and some Balzac. And something more serious. Guess
I'll try William James's book on psychology."
He bought them all next morning. His other belongings had been suited
to rapid transportation, and Martin Dockerill grumbled, "That's a
swell line of baggage, all right--one tooth-brush, a change of socks,
and ninety-seven thousand books."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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