"How does it feel," I asked him, "to have been selected Most Careful Greeter in the Senior Class of Harvard College?"
He smiled wryly--I have never known aim to smile any other way--and tapped a fresh cigarette on his thumbnail. He drew deeply, held his breath, and looked 3' the carpet through narrowed eyes.
"I like it, I might as well admit that well--I like it. It's what I've been shooting at ever since I was a Freshman, and though of course I suppose we thought more about this thing than, well, than anything else around college, just the same I was surprised to be elected Most Careful Greeter. There are lots of others..."
I protested.
"Oh, but there are, there are. I know several men who can do the Stare better than I. My Stare has never been what a should be. I can keep my eyes glassy, Yes, I can even do better than most Careful Greeters that exquisite expression of the thin, suddenly drawn-back lip. What was wrong I never suspected, but now--A professional secret, mustn't well. Honor bright?"
"Yes:"
"Honor bright?' He sounded insistent.
"Well honor bright."
"I think it's a weakness of category. You see, some Careful Greeters don't distinguish between the Cut and the Stare. I do. It may be splitting hairs, but I think there is a place for the Cut, the simple Stare, the Stare with modified eye-roll, and the Stare with lip movement. So that while I have sought variety, others have been content to remain in the simpler paradigms of greeting, and still use the common, or old-fashioned Stare on all occasions.
"Careful Greeterism has lately turned, like others of the world's great artistic movements, to classicism for its inspiration. I think it was Nennius who said. So act that each greeting, broadly implied, will never give a clue to your own true feeling.'
"But there is more in it even than that. A man who remembers a face, or who considers an introduction of the evening before ample reason for a nod, is no better, in my estimation, than one who thinks membership in the same club with one of these relaxed persons a justification of continued bowing to aim. And there still exist--can you believe it?--those who think playing on the same athletic squad full license for a greeting outside of season.
"I think the House Plan will make Careful Greeterism a subtler thing than ever before. Take me, for example, a Senior. I have fulfilled all my ambitions, academic and social. There is no one on whom I need to use the Chummy. But under the House plan even Seniors will be continually meeting professors. Useful levers to success, as the Chummy proved to be in the Freshman. Sophomore, and Junior years, need not be discarded. Variety and constant refurbishing: only these things can save Harvard from Keezerism--or friendliness. This tocsin is, of course, not for the herd. But, in Chaucer's words: 'If gold rust, what shall iron do?'"
"You have been most patient, sir. I wonder if you could give me a sententious message for our readers."
"Yes. A final word. It is this: Nothing is so essential to social happiness in the Harvard Yard as a correctly graded repertoire of Careful Greetings."
"Unless," my mind insisted, while I ran, "one included an understanding of the pitiful."
