A place more fair than Cherrywold—
With nature’s gifts more blessed—
You may not find, so I’ve been told,
From East to West.
But I would not be led that way,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day.
WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.
Lothario in Livorno
George Ardrath had the misfortune to enter his adolescent stage at the same time that he became initiated into the sacred mysteries of poetry-love. As a matter of fact, George was far ahead of most eighteen-year-old prep-school youths in regard to mental development—that is, he had passed the period during which most boys of his age delight in telling of minor moral peccadilloes. He no longer thought that the summum bonum was to be seen in a rather doubtful Manhattan cabaret, or to be able to talk intelligently about the exorbitant price of gin.