Four Quarters Volume 14 Number 3 Four Quarters: March 1965 Vol. XIV, No. Article 1 3 3-1965 Four Quarters: March 1965 Vol. XIV, No. 3 Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/fourquarters Recommended Citation (1965) "Four Quarters: March 1965 Vol. XIV, No. 3," Four Quarters: Vol. 14 : No. 3 , Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/fourquarters/vol14/iss3/1 This Complete Issue is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Four Quarters by an authorized editor of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. foiir Quarters Amy Evans Street • Page 1 A Short Story by Victor Chapin Paradox • Page 22 A Haiku by Francis Lehner CO Fictional New England: Empire 9i> in Dissolution • Page 23 An Article by John J. McAleer Epiphany • Page 29 13 A Quatrain by John Fandel Three Winter Scenes: • Page 30 The Land s»^ The Room The Heart Poems by Brother Fidelian, F.S.C. Rose Garrity • Page 31 A Fictional Narrative by David Kelly Dr. Jekyll's Music Lesson • Page 39 A Poem by Charles Edward Eaton 8-4 CO Lines for Bruce Mitchell • Page 40 A Poem by John Wheatcroft BQ March, 1963 vol. XIV, no. 3 • fifty cents Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/fourquarters91unse . Amy Evans Street Victor Chapin The Wordsworth School stood half- waited eagerly to give us pictures way up on a street that began in one and books. Our young minds were of New York's bad neighborhoods very well served, and any ideas that and ran gradually up a hill to one of came into birth on our lips were its better ones. The school building pounced upon and cherished; they faced a park that lay sideways on were dissected and analyzed accord- the hill and stretched away down- ing to the prevailing standards of town for many blocks. Over the tops "individual" education. We were of its prim looking trees you could prodded, gently but firmly, by famous see the Cathedral of St. John the scholars who recorded our reactions Divine. At the top of the park was in books. We lived on the topmost a long line of fashionable apartment level, getting more than our share houses, and below it was another line of the sun rays of care and atten- of less fashionable ones. Down below tion. We absorbed a great deal of was Harlem, and up above was Col- warmth, but we were very very ten- umbia University. Only the park der. came between them. We came to school in the mornings Some of us who were growing up in buses, streetcars, subways, or between the two World Wars went private automobiles. I got the Fifth every day to Wordsworth School, Avenue bus at the Eighty-sixth Street where our adventurous parents sent corner every morning at eight-fifteen. us to enjoy the benefits of progres- I took the same bus home every after- sive education. We did not know it noon at approximately three o'clock. then, but we were the luckiest teen- I traveled back and forth with many aged children in the city. We were of my schoolmates who lived on the the offspring of the liberal tradition; upper East Side. The even-numbered clothed, fed, and loved by the men streets where the bus stopped took on who had come home from the war to names in our minds, for we associated be inspired by Eugene V. Debs and them with the students who got on the women who had found their and off at them : Ninetieth Street was freedom at Vassar, Wellesley, and Hugo Street, Ninety-fourth was Edna Smith. Street, Ninety-sixth Valerie Street, We were well-mannered, unathletic and so on to One Hundred and Sec- adolescents at whom no one ever ond Street, where Fifth Avenue shouted "no." We were free to ask stopped being nice and Wordsworth what questions we liked, and some- students stopped hailing the bus. We one was always nearby to answer did not have a name for Ninety-sec- them according to the latest concepts ond Street until October 1934, when of right and wrong. We were sur- Amy Evans began going to our rounded by men and women who school. — Four Quarters I saw her standing at the Ninety- were walking away up the street. "Are second Street stop the first morning there enough seats?" of the new term, but since she did "Milhons." not climb to the upper deck, I We began to walk. Our book bags thought she was an ordinary traveler. bumped against our thighs. When we got off the bus, however, "Do you like Wordsworth?" I she followed behind us, all the way asked. to the school building. I did not see "I don't know yet." her again that day, as she was in "It's not bad." the tenth grade and I was in the We came to the entrance of the eleventh, but next morning she was school building. I stopped on the at Ninety-second Street as she had street before we went in. been the day before. She stayed on "I don't know your name," I said. the lower deck and lingered far be- "Amy Evans—I know your name." hind us as we marched from the bus "You do? How?" to school. This happened every morn- "I found it out. You see, Fve ing for two weeks. Then one morning, known you before." while we were all jumping off the "You have? Where?" bus, I decided to wait for her. She "This summer—in Switzerland was the last one to come through the Montreux. I saw you in a restaurant." door and step down to the sidewalk. "You did?" She blinked when she saw that I was "Yes." standing beside her. I looked closely "I was there this summer—but at her face. From a distance she how did you remember?" looked plain, but now I saw that her "I remembered because you look eyes, though small and withdrawn, like the King of Rome." were bright blue and sparkling. Her "Who?" nose and chin were small but delicate- "You k n o w—L'Aiglon—Napo- ly modeled. Her hair was blonde, leon's son—in the play." thin, and wispy. I saw that she was "I look like him?" lovely, not so much for her looks, "The way I think he looked." but for her air of unwilling shyness. "That's funny." She was slightly stoop shouldered, as "I was very surprised that first I was, and I immediately felt that I morning when I saw you get off the shared with her the fear of all the bus." voices that told her to stand up "Why didn't you speak to me?" straight. "I didn't want to." I spoke to her. "Why don't you "Oh." sit on the upper deck with us?" "I didn't want to find out that She lowered her eyes and rubbed you're not really like the King of her leather book bag against her Rome. I didn't want to spoil it." knees. She didn't answer me. "It's too late now." "Are you afraid of heights?" "I don't think I care now." "Oh, no," she said quickly, "it We smiled at each other and went isn't that." inside the building. "Then you'd better come up to- morrow." I was sixteen that year. My parents She was looking at the others, who did not let me stay out late in the " Amy Evans Street evening except on Fridays and Satur- When the intermission came, I days, when I was allowed to go to a went up to look for her. I found her theatre or to a party at a friend's in the Promenade standing under a house. On Sunday afternoons my picture of Hector Berlioz. There were mother always went with her sister a lot of people with her, but when to the Philharmonic concerts in Car- she saw me coming toward her, she negie Hall, and this year they asked grabbed hold of a woman who was me to go with them. I was presented standing beside her. with a large book of white tickets, "Look, Mother," she shouted. ! which I kept in my bureau drawer. "Here comes the King of Rome I liked the brown and gold feeling She broke away from the people of Carnegie Hall. I liked the com- and hurried over to me. She grabbed fortable, quiet people who sat near me by the hand and whirled herself me, and I liked the great chords that around in a circle. burst from the orchestra and seemed "It's beautiful, it's beautiful," she to shiver in the air. It was a long said. time before I liked anything but the I was embarrassed, but she came big loud sounds. I fidgeted during to a stop in front of me. Her face was the soft slow movements and looked flushed. "Come and meet lots of peo- up at the people who were sitting in ple." the boxes. It was one of these times, I went with her to the group. I during the first concert of the season, met her father, who was a big blus- that I looked up and saw Amy. She tering man who looked like a poli- was sitting in a lower tier box, her tician; her mother, who was fat and elbows were propped on the ledge jolly with an aristocratic look that in front of her, and her chin was contradicted her girth; her sister, buried in her hands.