Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/201

 youth used myself to revel with those that 'gloried and drank deep.' Used to spout, you know, about 'Bairam, that great hunter,' and the 'sons of Ben' at the Mermaid, and so on. But when I had an opportunity to compare the Bacchic frenzy of an ancient Greek or Persian or Elizabethan, as represented by the poets, with the Bacchic frenzy of an American citizen howling drunk—I declare, it was one of the major disillusions of my life. The actual beauty of the real thing has come at last to impress me as very nebulous, like the amours of Thomas the Rhymer with the queen of the fairies. The lover is too often left 'alone and palely loitering,' with a crumpled shirt-front, with his hat in the gutter, by a green lamp-post—'where no birds sing.

"Oh, green grapes!" stuttered Willys. "What can you make of green grapes! What can you know about it, Professor? On your own showing it's twenty years since—"

"True, Willys," I replied, "true. But the pathos of distance ought to lend a glamour to one's memories. One has, you know, one's memories. Even a Mid-Western professor has his memories; and in the deep interval of twenty years all that is ugly in them should have faded out, should have