【正文】 two in the morning, the new roommate39。She39。 What kind of a horse is it?39。m really getting at is this: Since the bridegroom39。emanated39。ve met the girl. She39。t know the number of the house, but it39。 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。s Uncle Al that the wedding guests were to use the cars standing at the curb。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。 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。 39。I39。 she inquired softly, with just a little emphasis no more than perfectly genteel on the personal pronoun. The Matron of Honor39。d39。 Mrs Silsburn said, softly. 39。s just darling enough to let anybody and his brother push her around. That39。Why?39。m sorry,39。t know which hotel,39。t get in till one o39。s feelings whenever you feel like it.39。 said the Matron of Honor. The chuckle at her left expanded in volume. 39。Just take it easy. You39。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?39。I didn39。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。 she said. 39。Oh,39。ve got to get to the wedding. Go . if you have to, but please go. It39。s letter. I still have it, and it follows here verbatim: Dear Buddy, I39。 on39。 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。 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。 I said. 39。 I told bin. 39。 Seymour said. 39。 lie said, 39。 camp in Maryland, and Walt was somewhere in the Pacific or on his way there with a fieldartillery unit. (We39。ll only pass along that our bined ine on 39。t know anything about the romance itself at all, except that they apparently met when Seymour was stationed at Monmouth last winter. The mother is the end a finger in all the arts, and sees a good Jungian man twice a week (she asked me twice, the night I met her, if I39。s going to be perfectly all right, but I hate 1942. I think I39。clock. I closed my eyes and waited, a trifle guardedly, for the anist to quit the incidental music and plunge into 39。s 39。 The one who had never been so hot in her entire life was, as I39。 Mrs Silsburn asked. Abruptly, conversationally. I had a brief coughing spell at that particular instant. When it was over, I turned to her with all available alacrity and said I39。I39。I mean it,39。s chuckle sounded again. 39。d have said to them. I probably would have just blabbered something idiotic. But my gosh. Honestly! I just can39。Nobody39。 she said. 39。We were boys together,39。Well, lucky you!39。 I asked the Matron of Honor.39。 the Matron of Honor said, rather explosively. 39。 She suspended animation just long enough to be bolstered by a look of simulated empathy from Mrs Silsburn. Mrs Silsburn and I were now turned pletely, supersociably, around in our jump seats. 39。 he asked and winked indiscriminately at me. 39。Just two minutes that39。s all.39。 I think you39。s Matron of Honor. She was a hefty girl of about twentyfour or five, in a pink satin dress, with a circlet of artificial fetmenots in her hair. There was a distinctly athletic ethos about her, as if, a year or two earlier, she might have majored in physical education in college. In her lap she was holding a bouquet of gardenias rather as though it were a deflated volleyball. She was seated in the back of the car, hippressed between her husband and a tiny elderly man in a top hat and cutaway, who was holding an unlighted clearHavana cigar. Mrs Silsburn and I our respective inside knees unribaldly touchingoccupied the jump seats. Twice, without any excuse whatever, out of sheer approval, I glanced around at the tiny elderly man. W