484
PARTISAN REVIEW
if someone had suddenly said the words, not written them after
thought.
The chalky familiar classroom had been glorified by this mo–
ment of Mr. Baxter's. So many things had been said in the room, but
here was one thing that had been said which was true.
It
was true
in two ways. For Mr. Baxter it was true that no
young
man believes
he shall ever die, but Mr. Baxter was not exactly a young man. For
Stephen Elwin it was true that he would never die-he was scarcely
even a young man yet, still only a boy. Between the student and the
teacher the great difference was that the student would never die.
Stephen Elwin had pitied Mr. Baxter and had been proud of himself.
And mixed with the boy's feeling of immortality was a boy's pleas–
ure at being involved with ideas which were not only solemn but
complicated, for l\1r. Baxter's mortality should have denied, but
actually did not deny, the immortality that Stephen felt.
The Hazlitt sentence, once it had been remembered, had not
left Elwin. Every now and then, sometimes just as he was falling
asleep, sometimes just as he was waking up, sometimes right in
the middle of anything at all, the sentence and the full aware–
ness of what it meant would come to him. It felt like an internal
explosion. It was not, however, an explosion of force but rather an
explosion of light. It .was not without pain but it was not wholly
painful.
With the picture neatly wrapped in heavy brown paper, Elwin
walked down Madison Avenue. It was still early. On a sudden
im–
pulse he walked west at 60th Street. Usually he came home by taxi,
but this evening he thought of the Fifth Avenue bus, for some rea–
son remembering that it was officially called a "coach" and that his
father had spoken of it so, and had sometimes even referred to it
as a "stage." The "coach" that he signaled was of the old kind, open
wooden deck, platform at the rear, stairs connecting platform and
deck with a big architectural curve. He saw it with surprise and
af–
fection. He had supposed that this model of bus had long been out
of service and as he hailed it his mind !'ought for and found a word
long unused. "DeDion," he said, pleased at having found it. "DeDion
Bouton."
He pronounced it
Deedeeon,
the way he and his friends had
said it in
1917
when they had discussed the fine and powerful motors
from Europe that were then being used for the buses. Some of them
had been Fiats, but the most powerful of all were said to be the De–
Dions from France. No one knew the authority for this superhtive
judgment, but boys finding a pleasure in firm opinions did not care.
