She was not yet of pin-up proportions, but I felt sure that time would supply the lack. With one omission, Polly fitted these specifications perfectly.Д«eautiful she was. The successful lawyers I had observed were, almost without exception, married to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. I was well aware of the importance of the right kind of wife in furthering a lawyerвЂ™s career. In a few years I would be out in practice. I wanted Polly for a shrewdly calculated, entirely cerebral reason. She was, to be sure, a girl who excited the emotions, but I was not one to let my heart rule my head. Let me emphasize that my desire for this young woman was not emotional in nature. He didnвЂ™t have it exactly, but at least he had first rights on it. It also happened that Petey had something I wanted. My father had had one in his undergraduate days it lay now in a trunk in the attic back home.

It so happened that I knew where to get my hands on a raccoon coat. вЂњAnything,вЂќ he affirmed in ringing tones. вЂњAnything?вЂќ I asked, looking at him narrowly. My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear. вЂњYou donвЂ™t understand,вЂќ he interrupted impatiently. вЂњIвЂ™ve got to have a raccoon coat,вЂќ he said passionately. He leaped from the bed and paced the room. вЂњIn the library,вЂќ I said, naming a place not frequented by Big Men on Campus. вЂњAll the Big Men on Campus are wearing them. вЂњCan you mean,вЂќ I said incredulously, вЂњthat people are actually wearing raccoon coats again?вЂќ Like a fool I spent all my money for textbooks, and now I canвЂ™t get a raccoon coat.вЂќ вЂњI should have known theyвЂ™d come back when the Charleston came back. вЂњI should have known it,вЂќ he cried, pounding his temples. I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental. One afternoon I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his face that I immediately diagnosed appendicitis. To be swept up in every new craze that comes along, to surrender yourself to idiocy just because everybody else is doing itвЂ“this, to me, is the acme of mindlessness. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. A nice enough fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ok. Take, for example, Petey Bellows, my roommate at the university. It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemistвЂ™s scales, as penetrating as a scalpel.

Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute, and astuteвЂ“I was all of these.

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