When a man is in training, that gush of
brightness makes him joyous; but a night with the fiend poisons the
light, the air, the soul. Bob lay on the floor under the full glare of
the window. What a fine fellow he was! His chest bulged strongly under
his fleecy sweater; his neck was round and muscular, and every limb of
him seemed compact and hard. His curls were all dishevelled, and his
face was miserably puffy, but he had not had time to become bloated. No
wonder that girls liked him.
Presently we were all awake, and a more wretched company could not very
well be found. Novelists talk about "a debauch" in a way that makes
novices think debauchery has something grand and mysterious about it.
"We must have orgies; it's the proper thing," says Tom Sawyer the
delightful. The raw lad finds "debauches" mentioned with majestic
melancholy, and he naturally fancies that, although a debauch may be
wicked, it is neither nasty nor contemptible. Why cannot some good man
tell the sordid truth? I suppose he would be accused of Zolaism, but he
would frighten away many a nice lad from the wrong road.
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