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PARTISAN REVIEW
and certain, although modest. And Seymour moved forward as a
bookmaker by securing a silent partner who gave him sufficient
capital to take as many bets as he felt he dared. The silent partner
took half of whatever money Seymour made as a bookmaker and
he took none of the risks that Seymour did with the police, who
were supposed to stop all professional gambling. Seymour's new am–
bition was to get a sufficient amount of capital to be free of
his
silent
partner, and then to enjoy the entire amount of the proceeds. But
this ambition often seemed out of his reach, because just as his savings
accumulated to the five thousand dollars he thought necessary, the
bettors made a killing which none could have foreseen and Seymour
was back where he started. With the rise in prosperity as the 1war
began in Europe, there was a rise in the amount of money which
was available for gambling and all looked well for Seymour until
he was taken by the draft. He was just one year too young to be too
old for the army, just as the last year of the first World War he had
been the right age, and he had not been taken only because the war
had ended in November.
Seymour regarded being drafted as a plain catastrophe. He had
thought that he would be rejected for physical reasons, but as he
said when he returned from his physical examination:
"If
you can breathe, you're in."
He went away to Camp Dix, feeling that the nemesis which had
hunted him down all his life had now become the whole of society.
After his first six weeks of training, during which he visited his mother
on every available occasion, he was sent to Texas for further training.
He had not been away from his mother an entire night for years
before this time and he was afraid that she might die during his
absence, a fear equal only to his fear that he himself was going to
be killed during the war. In the army, he was popular as a Broadv,:ay
gambler, his version of his civilian status, and for the first time in
his life he had to get up early in the morning whether he liked it or
not. But an old injury to his knee provided him with the excuse for
sick leave often enough.
His mother, questioned as to whether she missed him, said that
she was glad to get rid of him, and although she did feel his absence
as a breach of her daily life, nonetheless she accepted his departure
with the equanimity with which she had accepted all the chances
and changes she had known all her life.
In six months Seymour was discharged because of his poor
knee. He returned to the heart of the family in better health than
