It was not until the advent of J. Hugh Gambit that the problem was solved. Gambit singlehandedly created the art of Sexmanship--he was the first and, I venture to say, the greatest Sexman, though others have indeed followed in his footsteps. His basic maneuver--which later came to be known as Gambit's Gambit--occurred to him one day quite by chance. He had been brooding about the problem in his Boston lair when his landlady, a Mrs. O'Reilly, came to collect the rent. It suddenly came to his mind that, although her person was not too charming, her voice could possibly be made to sound young and beautiful over the phone. After several trying months of elocution lessons this proved to be the case. Gambit contracted with Mrs. O'Reilly to make 50 phone calls a month to his College room in not less than ten and not more than fifteen different tones of voice. viz: weeping, gay world weary etc.

Gambit's Gambit

Once or twice a day for the rest of his college career, except one week when she had a touch of the flu, Mrs. O'Reilly would call Gambit's rooms. It is two in the morning; Gambit has just returned from a hard night of study. He is, however, wearing a tuxedo and he has traces of lipstick on his face. (Gambit had a huge assortment of lipsticks, in all shades--Lipstickmanship was another of his innovations.) The phone rings.

Roommate: It's for you Gambit. A woman...again. She's in tears.

Gambit: How annoying. I told her not to bother me. (takes receiver). Hello.

Mrs. O'Reilly: You owe me 25 dollars.

Gambit: Of course I love you, dear. Now stop crying.

Mrs. O'Reilly: Love schmove.

Gambit: Yes, yes, yes. I do love you. Now go to sleep.

Mrs. O'Reilly: Come on. Cut it short.

Gambit: Oh all right. I'll call you tomorrow if that's what you want. Good night. (Hangs up.) Always pestering me...ought to have the telephone taken out...

Weekly Viscount Proposals

For football weekends Gambit used supplementary techniques. He would send himself telegrams at the last minute: "Sorry cannot come darling. Viscount proposed last night and simply couldn't resist. Yacht sails for Capri tonight. Toujours gai, darling. Signed Mimi."

No doubt about it Gambit was the greatest Sexman of them all, a consummate artist. Only he could have capped off his program with that exquisite touch of realism. Once a year he actually took out a real girl.

The expert Harvardman, therefore, must be practiced in Studymanship and Sexmanship. He must also be a Cultureman, steeped in the arts, high above the common herd in aesthetic sensibility. The Cultureman must have a carefully selected library including several rather seedy books, "picked up in a tiny bookstall on the Seine." He should be able to talk convincingly about his experiences in far-off and exotic lands; he need not, of course, have done any traveling at all. James Astor, who hailed from somewhere in Illinois, built himself quite a promising reputation by painstaking research in travel books without ever having seen the sea, much less traveled. He was sweeping all before him in his senior year when disaster struck one day. He was telling a rapt circle about his experiences in Dijon--he had recently come across a guide book for the town.