and neither am I, though I am more than you are."

"Who is one? What makes you one?"

Amory considered.

"Why--why, I suppose that the _sign_ of it is when a fellow slicks his
hair back with water."

"Like Carstairs?"

"Yes--sure. He's a slicker."

They spent two evenings getting 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,