Though the great athlete shared my admiration with the great writer, yet my staying awake at night writing, my but one meal a day, usually,--except when I was invited out to a fraternity house or the house of a professor--and my incessant drinking of coffee and coco-cola to keep my ideas whipped up--all these things incapacitated me from attaining any high place in athletic endeavour. I was fair at boxing and could play a good scrub game of football. But my running, on which I prided myself most--I entered for the two-mile, one field day, and won only third place. I had gone back in form since Hebron days. Dr. Gunning, head of our physical instruction, informed me that, exercise as I might, I could never hope to be stronger or put on more weight ... "you had too many hardships and privations in your growing years ... and you are of too nervous a temperament." * * * * * But my love for Vanna had regularised me somewhat. I discarded my sandals and bought Oxford ties. And I preserved a crease in my trousers by laying them, folded carefully, under my mattress every night. And I took to wearing shirts with white linen collars.... And I kept a picture of the girl I adored, secretly, among my manuscripts--it was one I had begged of "Con" Cummins, frankly taking him into my confidence as to my state of heart toward Vanna. Which confidence "Con" never abused, though it might have afforded endless fields of fun. "Con" framed the picture for me. When alone with it, I often actually knelt to it, as to a holy image. And I kissed and kissed it, till it was quite faded away. * * * * * Emma Silverman, the great anarchist leader, came to Laurel, with her manager, Jack Leitman. I went to the Bellman House, the town's swellest hotel, to see her. I had never met her but had long admired her for her activities and bravery. I found her a thick-built woman, after the gladiatorial fashion ... as she moved she made me think of a battleship going into action. There was something about her face ... a squareness of jaw, a belligerency, that reminded me of Roosevelt, whom I had seen twice ... once, at Mt. Hebron, when he had made a speech from the chapel platform ... (when I had determined not to join in the general applause of one whom I considered a mere demagogue--but, before I knew it, found myself on my feet roaring inarticulately as he strode in) and again, after he had returned from his African expedition, and had come to Laurel to dedicate a fountain set up for the local horses and dogs by the S.P.C.A. Jack Leitman looked to me like a fat nincompoop. Such a weakling as great women must necessarily, it seems, "fall for." But he was an efficient manager. Possessed of a large voice and an insistent manner, he sold books by the dozen before and after Emma Silverman's lectures....