To shove those books
into a suitcase and hasten to Philadelphia by trolley was the
obvious caper; and Leary's famous old bookstore ransomed the volumes
for enough money to provide an excellent dinner at Lauber's, where,
in those days, the thirty-cent bottle of sour claret was considered
the true, the blushful Hippocrene. But among the volumes was a copy
of Professor Page's anthology which had been used by one of J----'s
companions in that poetry course. This seemed to me too precious to
part with, so I retained it; still have it; and have occasionally
studied the former owner's marginal memoranda. At the head of The
Eve of St. Agnes he wrote: "Middle Ages. N. Italy. Guelph,
Guibilline." At the beginning of Endymion he recorded: "Keats tries
to be spiritualized by love for celestials." Against Sleep and
Poetry: "Desultory. Genius in the larval state." The Ode on a
Grecian Urn, he noted: "Crystallized philosophy of idealism.
Embalmed anticipation." The Ode on Melancholy: "Non-Gothic. Not of
intellect or disease. Emotions."
Darkling I listen to these faint echoes from a vanished lecture
room, and ponder. Did J---- keep his copy of the book, I wonder, and
did he annotate it with lively commentary of his own? He left
college at the end of our second year, and I have not seen or heard
from him these thirteen years. The last I knew--six years ago--he
was a contractor in an Ohio city; and (is this not significant?) in
a letter written then to another classmate, recalling some
waggishness of our own sophomore days, he used the phrase "Like Ruth
among the alien corn.
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