stand how valuable time was, and
what it would mean to Fallon's mother if he could come out a
valedictorian at the end of our four years.

"Which would you rather have," I asked him, "a valedictory or a friend?"

He stammered a good deal over it. He knew that Waters was right about
that: he did not have a single friend in the whole college--didn't know
how to go about it--but he didn't want such men as Waters trying to
teach him the way either.

That began my friendship for Fallon. I had acquaintances enough on the
campus, but I was almost as friendless as he--for friendlessness, I
think, is not so much a matter of other people's as of one's own habit
of mind. And there was something so grotesquely miserable about his
loneliness--something so like a grinning gargoyle, solitary in its
elevation--that I was drawn to him without much conscious effort.

I began by taking him for long walks. It was the first exercise of any
sort, outside of the required freshman gymnasium course, which he had
had in college. At first he would not talk at all; would just walk
beside me through the city's fringes into the half-suburban roads, his
eyes drinking in the green vistas as if they were astounding novelties,
his breath coming fast with exertion, his cheeks glowing with new color.
Gradually I urged him into talking--and, like all beginners, he talked
of himself entirely. It was good for him. The more he spoke of himself,
the more highly he thought of himself. He needed pride.

I had already been elected an editor of the college joke paper. I was
qualified, therefore, to persuade Fallon to contribute what he could to
that periodical. But he had not a jot of humor, and his contributions
turned out to be very long and serious bits of verse in studied French
rhyme schemes. I did not even risk reading them at a meeting of the
board, but always turned them over to Trevelyan who could have them used
in the coming issue of the other magazine, the literary monthly. This
set Fallon writing entirely for the "lit," as we called it--and, as a
result, when the elections to that paper were announced in the middle of
the sophomore year, Fallon's name and mine stood together.

But the happiest inspiration came to me one Sunday when at noon Fallon
and I were resting atop the Palisades, whither we had gone upon an
all-day tramp. I watched him pick up a flat rock and sent it sailing out
and down through space. His long thin arm gave the toss a surpri