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and do a little spooning as the evening developed. A very large moment in each evening, and one that made leaving at all tolerable, was to stand in the stormhouse on the front porch together and watch for the lights of the 10:30 bus coming over the hill in the distance. We'd stand there very close with my arm around Louie and it was rare experience in understanding each other, a relationship not to last but quite precious for awhile. The Neills were well connected and among Louie's good friends was Margaret Pierce, whose father was president of the Solvay Process Co., the largest industry in Syracuse, and who lived on an English-style estate on Orchard Road on the Solvay preserve not far from the Neills. Louie and I went over to see Margaret one day. Like Louie, Margaret had never traveled with any of the crowd I knew and I'd never met her. I remember thinking she was a most attractive girl but the thing which impressed me the most on our visit was meeting Margaret's brother, a boy in his mid-teens, who had been a blue-baby like my own brother except this boy had survived to live a very sequestered life and who was already near the end of that sequestered life of a semi-invalid. I decided then that Nature or Fate or whatever it is that controls such things, knows no favorite sand can strike anyone, rich or poor, good or bad, moral or immoral. It still doesn't seem right to me that things should be like this and it make some wonder sometimes just how expert the Steersman really is -- not a good thought, I realize, but one that's hard for me to elude when I see cases like my brother and Margaret Pierce's brother, but most of all, cases like our own dear little boy near Columbus. I simply cannot be philosophical about this no matter how hard I try.

Through Louie, I became much better acquainted with Puss Marvel who lived out on West Genesee also and who finally married Bob Howe, the son of the H.J.Howe jewelry business. The four of us did a few things together and were very congenial. Also I remember roaming the nearby countryside with Louie in the good weather, tramping in the fields and thoroughly enjoying the outdoors together. And the story of Louie and me goes on for a matter of some 45 years to come but I'll stop temporarily at this point and resume after I'd started college.

XIX

As I moved on toward the end of my high school career, I had to come to some decision about my future, most specifically what college courses I was going to take. Although my father, and both his father and grandfather, had been doctors, I never felt I wanted to take medicine -- perhaps it was because I'd seen my father literally sacrifice his life for his patients and I was too selfish to run the risk of being obliged to do anything as unselfish as he'd done. I think I'd have liked to undertake a writing career but the uncertainty of when I'd