Editor's Note. The Dodge Chemical Company, a leading manufacturer of embalming chemicals, publishes a monthly trade journal, the DE-CE-CO Magazine, which contains news of interest to members of the funeral profession and technical articles for embalmers. A regular feature of each issue is the column "This I Remember" by Jerome Burke. Each month Mr. Burke reminisces about persons who, through one misfortune or another have come under his professional cure. In the February, 1964, DE-CE-CO Magazine, Mr. Burke's memories concerned the sad demise of a Harvard man and a Radcliffe girl; the column is reprinted here with the kind permission of the Dodge Chemical Company. The cartoons accompanying the text were drawn by Henry Schwartz and did not appear with the original article--A.T.W.

I first saw Alice Holmes and Eric Atwood when they were playing the leading roles in the Spring play at Fairview High School. Monica and I had fifth row center seats in the school auditorium and, as we've done from the beginning, held hands from the moment the lights went down. The play was nothing much, a revival of an old Broadway comedy based on the tried and true formula of boy - meets - girl - boy - loses - girl - boy - gets - girl. But it was a delight to see how earnestly the youngsters threw themselves into their parts.

Alice was a pretty thing, with blond hair verging on copper tones. There was a sort of fairylike fragility about her arching, slender neck and delicately cut profile, and though she was not really small she seemed so, for she was slender and small-boned, not like a Watteau shepherdess, but like a little girl, and every move she made was graceful and unhurried as grain bending in the wind. Eric was not really handsome, but he had a clean-cut youthfulness, sleek hair, clear eyes and skin, and a certain litheness in his movements that bespoke the practiced athlete.

"Och, Jerry avick," Monica whispered as the lights went up between the second and third acts, "those children are so much in love it almost hurts me to watch them."

As usual, Monica was right. From the first kiss they'd exchanged there had been an obvious enthusiasm in their caresses; the near-impersonality of the typical theatre kiss was wholly lacking. When their lips met they clung together in a kiss with none of the essentials of a kiss left out.

It's wonderful to be young and in love," I told her.

Monica squeezed my hand. "It's wonderful to be in love, period," she corrected.

***

Spring ripened into summer. Alice and Eric received their diplomas and made plans for college. Eric had been accepted by Harvard, and despite her parents' desire that she go to Vassar, Alice insisted on Radcliffe. A fairly competent baseball pitcher can throw a stone from Radcliffe's campus to the Harvard Yard.

Eric's father had given him a Volks-wagen convertible as a graduation present, and the shiny little red vehicle became an integral part of the city's traffic, always with the same two passengers.

One evening Eric failed to come home for dinner. "I'm worried," Mrs. Atwood confessed. "Eric's a good driver, but there are so many careless youngsters behind steering wheels these days..."

"Probably over at the Holmes's for dinner," her husband cut in. "He's seeing too much of Alice, if you ask me. College is a serious business--a fulltime job--and if they keep on as they're going now he'll get a chuck-ticket from the School. Love's grand, as the feller says, but love and serious study just don't mix.

Mrs. Atwood made no answer. Instead she called the Holmes house on the 'phone.

"No, Alice hasn't come home either, yet," Mrs. Holmes answered. "I'm beginning to be worried."

Seven o'clock came, then eight, finally nine. When it was almost ten, the Atwood and Holmes' phones rang nearly simultaneously, and Mr. Atwood and Mr. Holmes received identical messages: "Dad, we're going to be married right away."