【正文】 h39。 Seymour said. 39。I thought maybe I39。 I told bin. 39。s on the stove, Mother said,39。 I said. 39。I know,39。 Duke Mu did so, and subsequently dispatched him on the quest for a steed. Three months later, lie returned with the news that lie had found one. 39。That friend of yours,39。 intent on the inward qualities, lie loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at. So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that lie has it in him to judge something better than horses.39。 infantry basic training. Tile twins, Walt and Waker, had been split up a whole year earlier. Waker was in a conscientious objectors39。 on39。 children ought to be outlawed, pitied, or unsentimentally executed as disturbers of the peace. For the moment, I39。s letter. I still have it, and it follows here verbatim: Dear Buddy, I39。t fair to say. I don39。ve got to get to the wedding. Go . if you have to, but please go. It39。t talk to. Maybe it39。Oh,39。s mother, but, to play it safe, I smiled and nodded gregariously, and was about to say who I was, but she put a decorous finger to her lips, and we both faced front. It was then, roughly, three o39。 she said. 39。 only after a formidablelooking platoon of people referred to as the bride39。s brother. Therefore, it seems logical that I was singled out for other, far less poetic reasons. The year was 1942. 1 was twentythree, and newly drafted into the Army. It strikes me that it was solely my age, my uniform, and the unmistakably serviceable, olivedrab aura about me that had left no doubt concerning my eligibility to fill in as doorman. I was not only twentythree but a conspicuously retarded twentythree. I remember loading people into cars without any degree of petence whatever. On the contrary, I went about it with a certain disingenuous, cadetlike semblance of singlemindedness, of adherence to duty. After a few minutes, inn fact, I became all too aware that I was catering to the needs of a predominantly older, shorter, fleshier generation, and my performance as an arm taker and door closer took on an even more thoroughly bogus puissance. I began to conduct myself like an exceptionally adroit, wholly engaging young giant with a cough. But the heat of the afternoon was, to say the least, oppressive, and the pensations of my office must have seemed to me increasingly tokenless. Abruptly, though the crowd of 39。ve never been so hot in my entire life.39。I didn39。How do you like the Army?39。s?39。 the Matron of Honor interrupted me, from the back of the car. 39。s left. He and I briefly exchanged that blank, unradely look which, possibly, in the crapulous year of 1942, only an officer and a private could exchange. A first lieutenant in the Signal Corps, he was wearing a very interesting Air Corps pilot39。s chuckle that would clearly signify that I was with him and everyone else in the car, against no one. 39。Just take it easy. You39。 Her husband39。 said the Matron of Honor. The chuckle at her left expanded in volume. 39。t know what I39。s feelings whenever you feel like it.39。 39。t get in till one o39。Ooo, it makes me so mad!39。t know which hotel,39。ve been terrified of mobs, off any kind, all my life. 39。m sorry,39。 39。Why?39。 Do you know? I tried to make my voice sound casual, as though, possibly, my father might be in the hotel business and I took a certain understandable filial interest in where people stopped in New York. In reality, my question meant almost nothing. I was just thinking aloud, more or less. I39。s just darling enough to let anybody and his brother push her around. That39。I haven39。 Mrs Silsburn said, softly. 39。I mean it,39。d39。Well, I don39。 she inquired softly, with just a little emphasis no more than perfectly genteel on the personal pronoun. The Matron of Honor39。s all, brother. Oh, if I could just get my two little hands 39。I39。 Mrs Silsburn turned briefly but pletely around to smile at the speaker. Then she faced front again. We made the round trip, inn fact, almost in unison. Considering that Mrs Silsburn had 6 turned around for only an instant, the smile she had bestowed on the Matron of Honor was a kind of jumpscat masterpiece. It was vivid enough to express unlimited partisanship with all young people, all over the world, but most particularly with this spirited, outspoken local representative, to whom, perhaps, she had been little more than perfunctorily introduced, if at all. 39。 39。re all just wonderful,39。 My tongue, at the time of the question, was curled back exploratively as far as the soft palate. I disentangled it, swallowed, and turned to her. She was fifty, or thereabouts, fashionably and tastefully dressed. She was wearing a very heavy pancake makeup. I answered no that I wasn39。d originally loaded the car and held the door open for him, I39。s enormous alertness and skill. The first four or five blocks north on Madison, conversation in the car was chiefly limited to remarks like 39。the immediate family39。s Uncle Al that the wedding guests were to use the cars standing at the curb。t a very clear idea of how the next hour and a quarter passed, aside from the cardinal fact that there was no plunging into 39。 She laughed rather immoderately, and showed me to what seemed to be the last vacant folding chair in a very crowded outsize room. I have a thirteenyearold blackout in my mind with regard to the overall physical details of the room. Beyond the fact that it was jampacked and stifling hot, I can remember only two things: that there was an an playing almost directly behind me, and that the woman in the seat directly at my right turned to me and enthusiastically stagewhispered, 39。d apparently overlooked saluting, crossing Seventh Avenue, suddenly took out a fountain pen and wrote down my name, serial number, and address while a number of civilians looked interestedly