The Washington herald., 1922-10-18
The Beautiful
And Damned
oo.tsnred from Yesterday.
By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Coaftnned from Yesterday.
Early In the summer Anthony re-
! slsned from his last club, the Am
sterdam- He had come to visit II
hardly twice a year. and the dues
We're a recurrent burden He had
Joined IL on his return from Italy
because II had been his grand
-father's> club and his fathers. and
because 1t was a club that, given
the opportunity. one indisputably
toined-but~ as a matter of fact he
had preferred the Harvard Club
largely because of Dick and Maury.
However. with the decline of his
fortunes. 1t had seemed an increas-
|. tngiy desirable bauble to cling to-
~. 1t was reiinquished at the
last. with some regret. -.
His Sompanions numbered now a
curious dozen. Several of them he
had met in a place called "Sammy's. +"
on Forty-third street, where, IL one
knocked on the door and were ia
vorably passed on from behind a
grating, one could sit around a
great round table drinking fairly
good whisky. 1t was here that he
encountered a man named Parker
Allison. who had been exactly the
wrong sort Of rounder at Harvard,
and who was running through a
large yeast fortune as rapidly as
possible. Parker Anison's notion Of
distinction consisted in driving a
noisy red-and-yellow racing car up
Broadway with two glittering, hard
eyed girls beside him. He was the
sort who dined with two girls rather
than with one-his imagination was
almost incapable of sustaining a
dialogue.
Besides Allison there was Pete
Lyte1, who wore a gray derby on
the side of his head He always had
money and he was customarily
cheerful. so Anthony held aimless,
long-winded conversation with him
through many afternoons of
summer and tall. LyteIl, he found
not only talked but reasoned in
phrases. His philosophy was a Sc
ries of them. assimilated here and
there through an active. thought
less life. He had phrases about So
cialtsm-the immemOriaI ones: he
had phrases pertaining to the exis-
tense Of a personal deity-some-
thing about one time when he had
been in a railroad accident: and he
had phrases about the Irish prob
lem, the sort of women he respected.
and the futility of prohibition. The
only time his conversation ever rose
superior to these muddleG clauses,
with which he interpreted the most
rococo happenings in life that had
been more than usually eventful.
was when he got down to the de-
tailed discussion of his most animal
existence: he knew, to a subtlety,
the foods. the liquor, and the women
that he preferred.
He was at once the commonest
and the most remarkable product of
civilization. He was nine out of ten
people that one passes on a city
street and he was a hairless ape
with two dozen tricks. He was the
hero of a thousand romances of life
and art-and he was a virtual mo-
ron, performing staidly yet absurdIy
series of complicated and infinitely
astounding epics over a span of
threescore years
With such men as these two An
thony Patch drank and discussed
and drank and argued. He liked
about him, because they lived in the
obvious and had not the faintest
conception of the inevitable con-
tinuity Of life. They sat not before
a motion picture with consecutive
reels. but at a musty. oId-fashioned
travelogue with all values stark and
hence all implications confused
Yet they themselves were not con-
fused. because there was nothing in
them to be confused-they changed
phrases from month to month as
they changed neCkties
Anthony, the courteous. the sub
tie. the perspicaciOus. was drunk
each day-in Sammy's with these
men. in the apartment over a book,
some book he knew. and. very rare
ly. with Gloria. who. in his eyes. had
begun to develop the unmistakable
outlines of a quarrelsOme and un-
reasonable woman. She was not
the Gloria of old. certainly-.the
Gloria who. had she been sick.
would have preferred to inflict mis-
cry upon every one around her
rather than confess that she needed
sympathy or assistance. She was
not above whining now: she was
not above being sorry for herself,
Each night when she prepared for
bed she smeared her face with some