Princeton University - Nassau Herald Yearbook (Princeton, NJ)

Page 27 text:

Class Prophecy snappy expression which would indicate supreme happiness to the reader. I suggested The Endv, but he looked at me so Hercely, that I made a dive for the door, and ran half way around the block lest his wrath overtake me. I I stopped at the corner to listen to three tattered individuals who were making night horrible by yelping popular songs in near harmony. I was about to toss the poor fellows a nickel when I stopped in surprise on noticing that the three were none other than Shelt Farr, Mac Magill and Bill Bickham. They had all been prosperous brokers, they told me, but had been ruined in the panic of 1938, when the multi-millionaire pro- moter, Dudley A. Hawley, had smashed the market into the middle of the ensuing week. So they had organized a quar- tette, and were gathering quite an income from sympathetic citizens with a tendency toward being goats. I had never before heard of three people being a quartette, and I ventured to ask where their second bass was. Shelt volunteered the reply: Poor old Johnny Johnson, he informed me, He's down and out. Mac started Who Killed Cock Robin too low the other day, and Johnny's voice went down so low' on the iirst line that it fell into his stomach, and heis had dyspepsia ever since. With which sad story, the three of them trundled away to start something somewhere else, and I turned to hncl out what the crowd was looking at behind me. I was in front of a large drug-store, and there was a man in the window showing the mob what a bully biceps he had, and trying to make them believe that Dr. Swat's Exerciser was responsible for them. I nearly passed out with joy. when I recognized Gouldy Wight, the strong man de luxe of the class. I couldn't resist going in and having words with. him. But he was feeling too low to be conversational, it seems that there was such a good crowd watching the exhibition that the boss would not let him off to get lunch. I slipped him the tip that it might help some if he sang to them, so Gouldy raised his adorable voice to the tune of Sumurun and the way that street cleared was a joy forever. 27

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The Nassau H effald What a wonderful child, Blooey, I bootlicked. Going to toll-ow his illustrious dad, I suppose, and go to Exeter and Princeton F Blooey muttered something about Briarcliff and Smith being more to the point, and offered to hit me if I insulted his offspring. I declined the favor, and went upstairs to see whom else I could find. Up a couple of flights, I ran against a big door with Managing Editor in big letters on it. I went in on a hunch, and sure enough, I was right, for there was our own john Larkin at the big desk, just as busy as he ever was, writing a play with one hand, and rubbing onion juice on his head with the other, lest he become totally bald. I-Iello, Jack, I ventured, timidly. 'iDon't bother me, he growled, I've got to get two plays written, finish six articles for the Outlook, and get out two issues of The Ladies' H 0144112 Journal before to-morrow night. I was completely awed by this recital, so I sneaked out and went up the wall a way, until I hit a door marked Poetry Editor . This appealed to me, so I went in. There at the desk was a long-haired genius whom I took to be Bill Barnett, whose exotic love lyrics in the Nassau Lit. used to make Keats and Shelley turn somersaults in their graves. At first, I wasn't quite sure whether it was Bill or his artist brother, as Mac Read aptly put it, Bill's brother looks more like Bill than Bill does himself. But when the busy editor looked up and said I-Iowdy do, I was sure it was my classmate, be- cause nobody except Bill Barnett could possible have taken such a long time to say two words. Of course Bill was for reading me his latest effusion, which began: t'Ah, sweet, my love I cannot tell, My love I' cannot tell. My love, ah sweet, I cannot tell- I cannot tell my love. I-lere he got stuck, he said, because he couldn't think of a short, 26

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The N assau H erald I couldn't help echoing the ideas of that crowd, and telling Gouldy that he might have considerable biceps but that when it came to singing he did it about as gracefully as Pat Kimball taking the high hurdles. At this, the young man's already riled temper got beyond controlg he rose in his wrath and caught me a peach in the jaw and-well, I woke up. ' I woke up to realize that my office as a prophet was fullilledg that I had successfully gone to sleep and dreamed what a lot of my classmates might do and be in the future. It's a perfectly safe bet that none of them will ever even approximate doing what I have wished on themg but do or be what they will, it is a fine thing to know that in it all they will be governed by the fact which will be vividly impressed on them to-morrow when they stand up to take their diplomas-the knowledge that they are Princeton men. 28