just then. What he needed, more than anything, was understanding and sympathy and comfort. How I longed to be his fairy godmother and give it all to him!
My biggest fear was that Harry would end up disliking me if I kept on talking about these intimate things. Or that he would avoid telling me anything for fear I would read all kinds of things into nothing. It would have broken my heart to bring him uneasiness and uncomfortableness, when I wanted to do just the opposite. It was because in all my long friendship with him I had seen absolutely nothing I could not admire that I had this deep feeling about his future. He was so generous with me—to allow me so many privileges and to put the best possible meaning into what I did and said. Our long, long friendship meant so much to me. I would have been the unhappiest of unhappy mortals if we had lost what was really a prize to us both. There was never any real danger of that happening, of course, but sometimes perverse Fate does try to get the best of such a friendship. Here’s for snapping our fingers under her nose!
Early that summer I went to Geneva, Ohio, to see my friend Mella’s daughter, Katharine Wright King, graduate from high school. Mella and I have been friends since college. Katharine took special honors—she and one boy, a regular Harry Haskell from the look of him. The boy had a higher average, but Katharine had been in high school only three years and was the youngest in her class.It was sweet to see her so happy and altogether lovely in her simple graduating dress, looking forward to everything with eagerness and a certainty that her dreams would come true. Katharine deserved nothing but the best, for she had a good mind, a fine start in character, and an attractive, winning personality. She wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she was charming—at least to her “Aunt” Katharine.
All through the ceremony I couldn’t stop thinking of Harry and me at Oberlin and how bright and eager we had been. The Order of the Empty Heart indeed! My girlfriends and I weren’t exactly starved for attention from the opposite sect. When I think how naive I was about accepting Arthur Cunningham’s engagement ring, it makes my heart go down to my boots. Well, the very first thing Mella told me when I got to her house was that Harry had sent a book to Katharine for her graduation. And when she said how pleased she was that he wanted to send her daughter a remembrance, there did flash through my mind the least suspicion that he was pleased to be sending it to my namesake!
Mella, in some way, gave me a little feeling that she had her own thoughts about my frankly confessed interest in and concern about Harry. It was a peculiar look she had when I said I had been writing to him a good deal since he had been alone. She said she had often thought of writing to him, to say she felt sorry for his loss, but lacked the confidence to actually do it. Well, I didn’t know quite how to respond, so I just said, “Harry is safe with me”—thinking that maybe he wasn’t quite safe among all those “vidders” in Kansas City. Ha ha! If I had known what lay in store for me when I went up to Oberlin for commencement that year, I would have turned tail and scampered straight home to Dayton!
Interlude
The Explorer,
Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Which of us can say when devotion turns into love, tenderness into passion? With Katharine one could never be sure where to draw the line. One minute she was all sweet reason, calmly discussing her “interest” in me, and the next minute she was practically begging me to make love to her. What puzzling creatures women are. I have devoted my life to unlocking the mysteries of the Arctic, but when it comes to the wilds of the female psyche, I’m in uncharted territory. Katharine once said the difference between us was that I had a “thinking heart,” whereas hers was a “singing heart.” Was it really as simple as that? Or was there some deeper mystery
My biggest fear was that Harry would end up disliking me if I kept on talking about these intimate things. Or that he would avoid telling me anything for fear I would read all kinds of things into nothing. It would have broken my heart to bring him uneasiness and uncomfortableness, when I wanted to do just the opposite. It was because in all my long friendship with him I had seen absolutely nothing I could not admire that I had this deep feeling about his future. He was so generous with me—to allow me so many privileges and to put the best possible meaning into what I did and said. Our long, long friendship meant so much to me. I would have been the unhappiest of unhappy mortals if we had lost what was really a prize to us both. There was never any real danger of that happening, of course, but sometimes perverse Fate does try to get the best of such a friendship. Here’s for snapping our fingers under her nose!
Early that summer I went to Geneva, Ohio, to see my friend Mella’s daughter, Katharine Wright King, graduate from high school. Mella and I have been friends since college. Katharine took special honors—she and one boy, a regular Harry Haskell from the look of him. The boy had a higher average, but Katharine had been in high school only three years and was the youngest in her class.It was sweet to see her so happy and altogether lovely in her simple graduating dress, looking forward to everything with eagerness and a certainty that her dreams would come true. Katharine deserved nothing but the best, for she had a good mind, a fine start in character, and an attractive, winning personality. She wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she was charming—at least to her “Aunt” Katharine.
All through the ceremony I couldn’t stop thinking of Harry and me at Oberlin and how bright and eager we had been. The Order of the Empty Heart indeed! My girlfriends and I weren’t exactly starved for attention from the opposite sect. When I think how naive I was about accepting Arthur Cunningham’s engagement ring, it makes my heart go down to my boots. Well, the very first thing Mella told me when I got to her house was that Harry had sent a book to Katharine for her graduation. And when she said how pleased she was that he wanted to send her daughter a remembrance, there did flash through my mind the least suspicion that he was pleased to be sending it to my namesake!
Mella, in some way, gave me a little feeling that she had her own thoughts about my frankly confessed interest in and concern about Harry. It was a peculiar look she had when I said I had been writing to him a good deal since he had been alone. She said she had often thought of writing to him, to say she felt sorry for his loss, but lacked the confidence to actually do it. Well, I didn’t know quite how to respond, so I just said, “Harry is safe with me”—thinking that maybe he wasn’t quite safe among all those “vidders” in Kansas City. Ha ha! If I had known what lay in store for me when I went up to Oberlin for commencement that year, I would have turned tail and scampered straight home to Dayton!
Interlude
The Explorer,
Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Which of us can say when devotion turns into love, tenderness into passion? With Katharine one could never be sure where to draw the line. One minute she was all sweet reason, calmly discussing her “interest” in me, and the next minute she was practically begging me to make love to her. What puzzling creatures women are. I have devoted my life to unlocking the mysteries of the Arctic, but when it comes to the wilds of the female psyche, I’m in uncharted territory. Katharine once said the difference between us was that I had a “thinking heart,” whereas hers was a “singing heart.” Was it really as simple as that? Or was there some deeper mystery
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