One September day in 1916, a skinny, adolescent boy, tugging at a cheap valise, and wearing a bob-tail coat and a pair of skin-tight trousers that made up in brevity and in anatomical frankness what they lacked in length, was coming up along one of the pleasant paths that bisect the lovely campus of an old college in the middle South, pausing from time to time to look about him in a rather uncertain and bewildered manner, and doubtfully to consult a piece of paper in his hand on which some instruction had evidently been written. He had just put down his valise again, and was looking at the piece of paper for the sixth or seventh time, when someone came out of the old dormitory at the head of the campus, ran down the steps, and came striding down the path where the boy was standing. The boy looked up and gulped a little as the creature of pantheresque beauty, moving with the grace, the speed, the delicacy of a great cat, bore down swiftly on him.
At that moment the overwhelmed boy was physically incapable of speech. If his life had depended on it, he could not have produced sounds capable of human hearing or understanding; and if he had been able to, he would certainly not have had the effrontery to address them to a creature of such magnificence that he seemed to have been created on a different scale and shape for another, more Olympian, universe than any the skinny, adolescent boy had ever dreamed of. But fortunately the magnificent stranger himself now took the matter in hand. As he came up at his beautiful pacing stride, pawing the air a little, delicately, in a movement of faultless and instinctive grace, he glanced swiftly and keenly at the youth with a pair of piercing, smokily luminous grey eyes, smiled with the most heartening and engaging friendliness—a smile touched with tenderness and humor—and then, in a voice that was very soft and Southern, a little husky, but for all its agreeable and gentle warmth, vibrant with a tremendous latent vitality, said:
“Are you looking for something? Maybe I can help you.”
“Y-y-yes, sir,” the boy stammered in a moment, gulped again, and then, finding himself incapable of further speech, he thrust the crumpled paper towards his questioner with trembling hand.
The magnificent stranger took the paper, glanced at it swiftly with that peculiar, keen intensity of his smoky eyes, smiled instantly, and said:
“Oh. McIver. You’re looking for Mclver. Freshman, are you?”
“Y-yes, sir,” the boy whispered.
For a moment more the magnificent young man looked keenly at the boy, his head cocked appraisingly a little to one side, a look of deepening humor and amusement in his grey eyes and in the quality of his pleasant smile. At length he laughed, frankly and openly, but with such a winning and friendly humor that even the awed youth could not be wounded by it.
“Damned if you ain’t a bird!” the magnificent young man said, and stood there a moment longer, shrewdly, humorously appraising his companion, with his powerful hands arched lightly on his hips in a gesture which was unconsciously as graceful as everything he did. “Here,” he said quietly, “I’ll show you what to do, freshman.” He placed his powerful hands on the boy’s skinny shoulders, faced him around, and then, speaking gently, he said, “You see this path here?”
“Y-yes. sir.”
“You see that building down there at the end of it—that building with the white columns out in front?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well,” the young Olympian said quietly and slowly, “that’s McIver. That’s the building that you’re looking for. Now,” he continued very softly, “all you got to do is to pick up your valise, walk right along this path, go up those steps there, and go into the first door on your right. After that, they’ll do the rest. That’s where you registah.” He paused a moment to let this information sink in, then, giving the boy a little shake of the shoulders, he said gently: “Now do you think you’ve got that straight? You think you can do what I told you to do?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“All right!” and, with the amazing speed and grace with which he did everything, the Olympian released him, cast up his fine head quickly, and laughed a deep, soft, immensely winning laugh. “All right, freshman,” he said. “On your way. And don’t let those sophomores sell you any radiators or dormitories until you get yourself fixed up.”