ago the world began…. There goes the last bell, run, boy, run: you’ll just have time…. There are times that make you ha-a-ap-py, there are times that make you sa-a-ad…. Do you remember the night you came back to the University: it was that time right after your brother’s death, you had just come back that night; I know I was coming across the campus before Old East when I saw you coming up the path with a suitcase in your hand. It was raining, but we both stopped and began to talk there—we stepped in under one of the oak-trees because it was raining. I can still remember the old, wet, shining bark of the tree—the reason I can remember is that you put your hand out and leaned against the tree as you talked to me and I kept thinking how tall you were—of course you didn’t notice it, you weren’t conscious of it, but you had your head up and it must have been about eight feet above the ground. But I can remember everything we said that night—it was that time when you came back just after your brother’s death: that’s when it was all right, I guess that’s why I can remember it so well…. It’s time all little boys were in bed…. Now, boy, I’ll tell you when it was: it was that time your Papa made that trip to California—the reason that I know is I had just got a letter from him that morning written from Los Angeles telling me how he had seen John Balch and old Professor Truman, and how they had both gone into the real-estate business out there, and both of them getting rich by leaps and bounds—but that’s just exactly when it was, sir, the time he made that trip out there in 1906, along towards the end of February, and I had just finished reading his letter when—well, as I say now… Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes… time of my father’s time, life of his life. “Ah, Lord,” he said, “I knew them all—and all of them are gone. I’m the only one that’s left. By God! I’m getting old.”… In the year that the locusts came, something that happened in the year the locusts came, two voices that I heard there in that year…. Child! Child! It seems so long ago since the year the locusts came, and all of the trees were eaten bare: so much has happened, and it seems so long ago….
“To keep time with!”—To Eugene Gant, Presented to Him on the Occasion of His Twelfth Birthday, by His Brother, B. H. Gant, October 3, 1912…. “To keep time with!”… Up on the mountain, down in the valley, deep, deep in the hill, Ben, cold, cold, cold.
“Ces arbres—”
“Monsieur?” a thin, waxed face of tired Gaul, professionally attentive, the
