Beta Book

"
Then he said: "Oh, darn it all. I feel rotten. I wish I was dead!"

"Those, sir, are the windows of the apartment once occupied by
Walter Pater," said the cultured American after whom he was
trailing. Mr. Wrenn viewed them attentively, and with shame
remembered that he didn't know who Walter Pater was. But--oh
yes, now he remembered; Walter was the guy that 'd murdered his
whole family. So, aloud, "Well, I guess Oxford's sorry Walt
ever come here, all right."
"My dear sir, Mr. Pater was the most immaculate genius of the
nineteenth century," lectured Dr. Mittyford, the cultured
American, severely.
Mr. Wrenn had met Mittyford, Ph.D., near the barges; had, upon
polite request, still more politely lent him a match, and seized
the chance to confide in somebody. Mittyford had a bald head,
neat eye-glasses, a fair family income, a chatty good-fellowship
at the Faculty Club, and a chilly contemptuousness in his
rhetoric class-room at Leland Stanford, Jr., University. He
wrote poetry, which he filed away under the letter "P" in his
letter-file.


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