d like anybody else in the Yale Club from hair parted in the
middle to low heavyish brown shoes, though the punctured patterns on
the latter are a year or so out of date. There is very little that is
remarkable about his appearance except the round, rather large head that
shows writer or pugilist indifferently, brilliant eyes, black as black
warm marble under heavy tortoise-shell glasses and a mouth that is not
weak in the least but somehow burdened by a pressure upon it like a
pressure of wings, the pressure of that kind of dream which will not
release the flesh it inhabits always and agonizes often until it is
given perfect body and so does not release it until such flesh has
ceased. At present he is not the youngest anything, except, according
to himself 'the youngest failure in advertising,' but a book of nakedly
youthful love-poetry, which in gloomy moments he wishes had never been
written, although the _San Francisco Warbler_ called it as 'tensely
vital as the Shropshire Lad,' brought him several column reviews and
very nearly forty dollars in cash at twenty-one and since then many
people of his own age and one or two editors have considered him "worth
watching."

Ted Billett is dark too, but it is a ruddy darkness with high clear
color of skin. He could pass anywhere as a College Senior and though his
clothes seem to have been put on anyhow with no regard for pressing
or tailoring they will always raise a doubt in the minds of the
uninstructed as to whether it is not the higher carelessness that has
dictated them rather than ordinary poverty--a doubt that, in many cases,
has proved innocently fortunate for Ted. His hands are a curious mixture
of square executive ability and imaginative sensitiveness and his
surface manners have often been described as 'too snotty' by delicate
souls toward whom Ted was entirely unconscious of having acted with
anything but the most disinterested politeness. On the other hand a
certain even-tempered recklessness and capacity for putting himself
in the other fellow's place made him one of the few popularly lenient
officers to be obeyed with discipline in his outfit during the war. As
regards anything Arty or Crafty his attitude is merely appreciative--he
is finishing up his last year of law at Columbia.

Johnny introduces Oliver and Ted to everybody but Peter--the three were
classmates--shepherds his flock with a few disarmingly personal insults
to prevent stiffness closing down ag