.. the spirit-woman Egeria grew
real as flesh and blood to me....
"Egeria! Egeria!--"
I woke, time and again, and heard my own voice, like the voice of
another, calling her name in the dark.
* * * * *
"You mustn't take the play so desperately ... remember it's just a play
... you rehearse as if the whole thing were a part of your life."
"Some of the boys," I replied, "some of the football boys lost ten or
twelve pounds in our Thanksgiving game at Kansas City last fall ... why
do you rebuke me for taking art and beauty as seriously as athletes take
a football match?"
* * * * *
Two days before the play, as I was walking by the Bellman House, I saw
Jarvis Alexander Mackworth standing there, come up from Osageville for a
regents' conference....
"Hello!" the dear, good man called, "you heavenly bum! You starry young
tramp!"
His eyes were twinkling in appreciative merriment over his quaint
phraseology.
"What are you doing in Laurel, Mr. Mackworth?"
I noticed that he did not wear his many-patched trousers, but was well
dressed....
--"attending a regents' meeting, young man,--where I suppose I'll have
to stand up in your defence again....
"It's a good thing you don't run after the women, Gregory, or your case
would be entirely lost."
(Yet Mackworth didn't know of the dirty trick that had been played on
me:
One of the boys from the school, running wild down in Kansas City, had,
with a curious sense of humour, given my name as his .
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