an exact definition. The slicker was
good-looking or clean-looking; he had brains, social brains, that is,
and he used all means on the broad path of honesty to get ahead,
be popular, admired, and never in trouble. He dressed well, was
particularly neat in appearance, and derived his name from the fact that
his hair was inevitably worn short, soaked in water or tonic, parted
in the middle, and slicked back as the current of fashion dictated. The
slickers of that year had adopted tortoise-shell spectacles as badges
of their slickerhood, and this made them so easy to recognize that Amory
and Rahill never missed one. The slicker seemed distributed through
school, always a little wiser and shrewder than his contemporaries,
managing some team or other, and keeping his cleverness carefully
concealed.

Amory found the slicker a most valuable classification until his junior
year in college, when the outline became so blurred and indeterminate
that it had to be subdivided many times, and became only a quality.
Amory's secret ideal had all the slicker qualifications, but, in
addition, courage and tremendous brains and talents--also Amory conceded
him a bizarre streak that was quite irreconcilable to the slicker
proper.

This was a first real break from the hypocrisy of school tradition. The
slicker was a definite element of success, differing intrinsically from
the prep school "big man."

"THE SLICKER"

1. Clever sense of social values.

2. Dresses well. Pretends that dress is superficial--but knows that it isn't.

3. Goes into such activities as he can shine in.

4. Gets to college and is, in a worldly way, successful.

5. Hair slicked.

"THE BIG MAN"

1. Inclined to stupidity and unconscious of social values.

2. Thinks dress is superficial, and is inclined to be
careless about it.

3. Goes out for everything from a sense of duty.

4. Gets to college and has a problematical future. Feels lost
without his circle, and always says that school days were
happiest, after all. Goes back to school and makes speeches
about what St. Regis's boys are doing.

5. Hair not slicked.

Amory had decided definitely on Princeton, even though he would be the
only boy entering that year from St. Regis'. Yale had a romance and
glamour from the tales of Minneapolis, and St. Regis' men who had been
"tapped for Skull and Bones," but Princeton drew him most, with
its atmosphere of bright colors a