I went up to the athletic field and ran my last two miles on its track,
at top speed, as good-bye to its cinders forever!
I walked, with a guilty feeling of too much sentimentality, back into
the "stack" at the university library. I took down book after book of
the great English poets, and pressed my cheek to them in long farewell
... first glancing cautiously around, to be sure that no one was near to
observe my actions....
I did not say good-bye to Langworth or my other professor friends, as
they had already left for their summer vacations.
* * * * *
I sat in Joe Deacon's room, talking, that last night of my sojourn in
Laurel....
"Good old Joe" we called him, because he was possessed of all the
old-fashioned virtues, and unassumingly lived up to them. He was a
fellow member of the Scoop Club, an associate teacher in the School of
Journalism, and taught during the summer session....
Long, long Joe and I talked ... of everything young idealists discuss or
dream of. We ended with a discussion of the sex question. I reiterated
what he already had heard me say, that I had had so far no sex
experience. He confessed that he, also, had had none ... maintained that
a decent man should wait, if he expected a woman to come pure to him....