in its grim fight with chaos. I confess I could never myself see in
this note anything to produce so amazing an affirmation; but in these
matters I am a worm; I have not the philosophic _flair_. Here it is:

"'We know that life is a dream, and how should thinking be more?'
Because, my dear Mr. Santayana, a dream cannot propagate dreams and
realize them to be such. The answer is sufficient."

Well, certainly Susan, too, seemed to feel it sufficient; and perhaps I
should agree if I better understood the answer.... But I have now
breasted four flights to Phil and am knocking impatiently.... He opened
to me and welcomed me cordially, all trace of his parting gruffness of
the other evening having vanished, though he was still haggard about the
eyes. He was not alone. Through the smoke haze of his study I saw a
well-built youngster standing near the fireplace, pipe in hand; some
college boy, of course, whom Phil was being kind to. Phil was forever
permitting these raw boys to cut in upon his precious hours of privacy;
yet he was at the opposite pole from certain faculty members, common to
all seats of learning, who toady to the student body for a popularity
which they feel to be a good business asset, or which they find the one
attainable satisfaction for their tottering self-esteem.

Phil, who had had to struggle for his own education, was genuinely fond
of young men who cared enough for education to be willing to struggle
for theirs. He had become unobtrusively, by a kind of natural affinity,
the elder brother of those undergraduates who were seekers in any sense
for the things of the mind. For the rest, the triumphant majority--fine,
manly young fellows as they usually were, in official oratory at
least--he was as blankly indifferent as they were to him.

"My enthusiasm for humanity is limited, fatally limited," he would
pleasantly admit. "For the human turnip, even when it's a prize
specimen, I have no spontaneous affection whatever."

On the other hand it was not the brilliant, exceptional boy whom he best
loved. It was rather the boy whose interest in life, whose curiosity,
was just stirring toward wakefulness after a long prenatal and postnatal
sleep. For such boys Phil poured forth treasures of sympathetic
understanding; and it was such a youth, I presume, who stood by the
fireplace now, awkwardly uncertain whether my coming meant that he
should take his leave.

His presence annoyed me. On more than one occasion