All the rest,
brilliant as they once were, are presumed to be "boozed,"
"tanked," "burnt out," "bust-up," and otherwise consumed.
After having heard for so many years the reminiscences
of my good friend about the old gang, it seemed almost
incredible that one of them should step into actual living
being before my eyes. Yet so it happened.
I found Mr. Sims at the club one day, about to lunch
there, a thing contrary to his wont. And with him was a
friend, a sallow, insignificant man in the middle fifties,
with ragged, sandy hair, wearing thin.
"Shake hands with Tommy Vidal," said Mr. Sims proudly.
If he had said, "Shake hands with Aristotle," he couldn't
have spoken with greater pride.
This then was Tommy Vidal, the intellectual giant of whom
I had heard a hundred times. Tommy had, at college, so
Mr. Sims had often assured me, the brightest mind known
since the age of Pericles. He took the prize in Latin
poetry absolutely "without opening a book." Latin to
Tommy Vidal had been, by a kind of natural gift, born in
him. In Latin he was "a whale." Indeed in everything. He
had passed his graduation examination with first class
honours; "plastered.
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