Robin Hood's Barn 



himself not more remote from the sharp frays 

 that were to win him knighthood than I from 

 those encounters where I was to queen it with 

 a classic art. Yet as I look back upon the cam- 

 pus, clean-swept of men save ministrants, I see 

 grotesque figures against the past horizon and 

 myself, breathless and startled, ignominiously on 

 the run. 



This is, you are to understand, not a vaunt of 

 prowess, but a confession of defeat. Boast comes 

 not from the attitude of flight, but from the for- 

 tune and the face of the pursuant. And imagine 

 Dido picking up her train and scuttling from the 

 druggist's clerk, who left her potions and love 

 filters in the lower court. The fact that I ever 

 saw his shufiling figure and came to know the 

 patience expressed in his cadaverous face as per- 

 sonal, was proof of my long distance from 

 Decorum's throne. Once, moreover, that I had 

 tried the blinding flash and seen it fizzle out, it 

 was my glance that changed, not his. It grew 

 ftui;ive, peering. I looked before I leaped. 

 Instead of passing with my academic robes afloat, 



[i8o] 



