my age you will give out, as I do,
  the genial golden warmth of 4 P.M.

  If you write me letters, please let them be natural ones.  Your
  last, that dissertation on architecture, was perfectly awful—
  so "highbrow" that I picture you living in an intellectual and
  emotional vacuum; and beware of trying to classify people too
  definitely into types; you will find that all through their youth
  they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class, and
  by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are
  merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at
  you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with
  the world.  An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da
  Vinci would be a more valuable beacon to you at present.

  You are bound to go up and down, just as I did in my youth, but
  do keep your clarity of mind, and if fools or sages dare to
  criticise don't blame yourself too much.

  You say that convention is all that really keeps you straight in
  this "woman proposition"; but it's more than that, Amory; it's
  the fear that what you begin you can't stop; you would run amuck,
  and I know whereof I speak; it's that half-miraculous sixth sense
  by which you detect evil, it's the half-realized fear of God in
  your heart.

  Whatever your metier proves to be—religion, architecture,
  literature—I'm sure you would be much safer anchored to the
  Church, but I won't risk my influence by arguing with you even
  though I am secretly sure that the "black chasm of Romanism"
  yawns beneath you.  Do write me soon.

    With affectionate regards,          THAYER DARCY.
Even Amory's reading paled during this period; he delved further into the misty side streets of literature: Huysmans, Walter Pater, Theophile Gautier, and the racier sections of Rabelais, Boccaccio, Petronius, and Suetonius. One week, through general curiosity, he inspected the private libraries of his classmates and found Sloane's as typical as any: sets of Kipling, O. Henry, John Fox, Jr., and Richard Harding Davis; "What Every Middle-Aged Woman Ought to Know," "The Spell of the Yukon"; a "gift" copy of James Whitcomb Riley, an assortment of battered, annotated schoolbooks, and, finally, to his surprise, one of his own late discoveries, the collected poems of Rupert Brooke.
Together with Tom D'