【正文】 he hardly said two words the night I met her. Just sat and smiled and smoked, so it isn39。ve had five letters from him in my life. On the morning of either 22 or 23 May (no one in my family has ever dated a letter), a letter from my sister Boo Boo was placed on the foot of my cot in the post hospital at Fort Benning while my 2 diaphragm was being strapped with adhesive tape (a usual medical procedure with pleurisy patients, presumably guaranteed to prevent them from coughing themselves to pieces). When the ordeal was over, I read Boo Boo39。professional39。 guests39。d care to send out to look for horses in his stead. In late May of 1942, the progeny seven in number of Les and Bessie (Gallagher) Glass, retired Pantages Circuit vaudevillians, were flung, extravagantly speaking, all over the United States. I, for one, the secondeldest, was in the post hospital at Fort Benning, Geia, with pleurisy a little keepsake of thirteen weeks39。Ah, then he is worth ten thousand of me put together. There is no parison between us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. hi making sure of the essential, he fets the homely details。 was the reply. However, someone being sent to fetch it, the annual turned out to be a coalblack stallion! Much displeased, the Duke sent for Po Lo. 39。 they call tell a good horse when they see one, but they cannot tell a superlative horse. I have a friend, however, one Chinfang Kao, a hawker of fuel and vegetables, who in things appertaining to horses is nowise my inferior. Pray see him.39。 I said. 39。What arc you going to do?39。The bottle39。 I gave it to her a little while ago,39。d read something to her,39。They have ears. They can hear.39。iu,39。whom I missioned to look for a horse, has made a fine mess of it. Why, lie cannot even distinguish a beast39。ve reproduced the tale here not just because I invariably go out of my way to remend a 1 good prose pacifier to parents or older brothers oftenmonthold babies but for quite another reason. What directly follows is an account of a wedding day in 1942. It is, in my opinion, a selfcontained account, with a beginning and an end, and a mortality, all its own. Yet, because I39。ve never been altogether sure where Walt was at that specific time. He was never a great letter writer, and very little personal information almost none reached us after his death. He was killed in an unspeakably absurd . accident in late autumn of 1945, in Japan.) My eldest sister, Boo Boo, who es, chronologically, between the twins and me, was an ensign in the Waves, stationed, off and on, at a naval base in Brooklyn. All that spring and summer, she occupied the small apartment in New York that my brother Seymour and I had all but technically given up after our induction. The two youngest children in the family, Zooey (male) and Franny (female), were with our parents in Los Angeles, where my fit her was hustling talent for a motionpicture studio. Zooey was thirteen, and Franny was eight. They were both appearing every week on a children39。s a Wise Child39。It39。m just sick about it. Seymour aside, it means Quonset huts in freezing air bases and boyish passes from our fighting men and those horrible paper things to get sick in on the plane. The point is, Seymour is getting married yes, married, so please pay attention. I can39。d ever been analyzed). She told me she just wishes Seymour would relate to more people. In the same breath, said she just loves him, though, etc., etc., and that she used to listen to him religiously all the years lie was on the air. That39。clock, June 4th. Very nonsectarian and Emancipated, at her grandmother39。ll hate 1942 till I die, just on general principles. All my love and see you when I get back. Boo Boo A couple of days after the letter arrived, I was discharged from the hospital, in the custody, so to speak, of about three yards of adhesive tape around my ribs. Then began a very strenuous week39。well, we39。Lohengrin39。 And I remember the an music veering peculiarly, almost desperately, at one point, from Bach to early Rodgers and Hart. On the whole, though, I39。immediate family39。 seemed scarcely to have begun to thin out, I myself lunged into one of the freshly loaded cars, just as it started to draw away from the curb. In doing it, I hit my head a very audible (perhaps retributive) crack on the roof. One of the occupants of the car was none other than my whispering acquaintance, Helen Silsburn, and she started to offer me her unqualified sympathy. The crack had evidently resounded throughout the car. But at twentythree I was the sort of young man who responds to all public injury of his person, short of a fractured skull, by giving out a hollow, subnormalsounding laugh. The car moved west, directly, as it were, into the open furnace of the lateafternoon sky. It continued west for two blocks, till it reached Madison Avenue, and then it rightangled sharply 5 north. I felt as though we were all being saved from being caught up by the sun39。d learned from a certain amount of eavesdropping at the curb, the bride39。s that darling mother of yours? Aren39。d made a lot of buddies. It was a little difficult for me to swivel in her direction, what with the encasement of adhesive tape around my diaphragm. She nodded. 39。Well, actually, I39。d like to get my hands on him for about two minutes. Just two minutes, that39。t begin to fill the bill. It seemed to serve no other purpose than to make my own outsize, regulation headpiece feel rather like a clown39。 the Matron of Honor said. 39。 Mrs Silsburn faced around toward the back of the car again, and favored the Matron of Honor with an all but canonized smile. 39。What wouldja done if you had, honey?39。 she insisted. 39。t stand to see somebody get away with absolute murder. It makes my blood boil.39。I39。s met him,39。 The Matron of Honor shuddered eloquently. 39。What hotel?39。Just some hotel.39。 I answered, all but unintelligibly.