No one was able really to explain the causes for the change, but it was there and welcome. The "Sanford Literary Magazine," which had been slowly perishing for several years, became almost as popular as the "Cap and Bells," the comic magazine, which coined money by publishing risque jokes and pictures of slightly dressed women. A poetry magazine daringly made its appearance on the campus and, to the surprise of its editors, was received so cordially that they were able to pay the printer's bill.
It became the fashion to read. Instructors in English were continually being asked what the best new books were or if such and such a book was all that it was "cracked up to be." If the instructor hadn't read the book, he was treated to a look of contempt that sent him hastening to the library.
Of course, not all of the undergraduates took to reading and thinking; the millennium had not arrived, but the intelligent majority began to read and discuss books openly, and the intelligent majority ruled the campus.
Hugh was one of the most enthusiastic of the readers. He was taking a course in nineteenth-century poetry with Blake, the head of the English department. His other instructors either bored him or left him cold, but Blake turned each class hour into a thrilling experience. He was a handsome man with gray hair, dark eyes, and a magnificent voice. He taught poetry almost entirely by reading it, only occasionally interpolating an explanatory remark, and he read beautifully. His reading was dramatic, almost tricky; but it made the poems live for his students, and they reveled in his classes.
Hugh's junior year was made almost beautiful by that poetry course and by his adoration for Cynthia. He was writing verses constantly—and he found "Cynthia" an exceedingly troublesome word; it seemed as if nothing would rime with it. At times he thought of taking to free verse, but the results of his efforts did not satisfy him. He always had the feeling that he had merely chopped up some rather bad prose; and he was invariably right. Cynthia wrote him that she loved the poems he sent her because they were so passionate. He blushed when he read her praise. It disturbed him. He wished that she had used a different word.
CHAPTER XXI
For the first term Hugh slid comfortably down a well oiled groove of routine. He went to the movies regularly, wrote as regularly to Cynthia and thought about her even more, read enormous quantities of poetry, "bulled" with his friends, attended all the athletic contests, played cards occasionally, and received his daily liquor from Vinton. He no longer protested when Vinton offered him a drink; he accepted it as a matter of course, and he had almost completely forgotten that "smoking wasn't good for a runner." He had just about decided that he wasn't a runner, anyway.
One evening in early spring he met George Winsor as he was crossing the campus.
"Hello, George. Where are you going?"