and after a series of frantic telegrams to Europe and America, to the
amazement of the passengers the great ship slowly wheeled around and
returned to New York to deposit Amory at the pier. You will admit that
if it was not life it was magnificent.

After the operation Beatrice had a nervous breakdown that bore a
suspicious resemblance to delirium tremens, and Amory was left in
Minneapolis, destined to spend the ensuing two years with his aunt
and uncle. There the crude, vulgar air of Western civilization first
catches him--in his underwear, so to speak.

* * * *

A KISS FOR AMORY

His lip curled when he read it.

"I am going to have a bobbing party," it said, "on Thursday,
December the seventeenth, at five o'clock, and I would like it
very much if you could come.

Yours truly,

R.S.V.P. Myra St. Claire.

He had been two months in Minneapolis, and his chief struggle had been
the concealing from "the other guys at school" how particularly superior
he felt himself to be, yet this conviction was built upon shifting sands.
He had shown off one day in French class (he was in senior French class)
to the utter confusion of Mr. Reardon, whose accent Amory damned