Hanover Swings With the Seasons
Spring vacation is the main weather-joint of the Hanover year. The youngmen leave a town running with muddy water and come back to walk sloweiand slower in the early April sun. Baseball on the campus is Dartmouth'srite of spring: instead of making the primitive blood-sacrifice a boy will riskhis neck shagging flies over the duckboards. The town and the College unravel the winter cocoon sharply When April comes and life along the Connecticut River is lazy.
In the laboratory they sit and catch the twist of microscopic living. Smallanimals and plants perform the vernal dances as if April were always Apriland a slide no less private than a swamp. Human fingers, skilful; humaneyes, watchful; and the human brain, wondering: what makes it tick? istheir life as live as ours? does the amoeba know where it's going any morethan I do? In April, a pleasant month, they look up from the microscopes,to think, and to notice out the window the buds newly come from the treesand swaying in the sun.
Nothing ever changes Fletcher, who lives down in our alley. He is in a newbasement place on South Main Street, but he is still the smiling, wideeyed, fast-talking, big-business, same-old-story Fletch. Always ready to stealyour furniture for cash, glad to supply anything from a shoe-lace to a poundof hot nuts, enemy of the rich and friend of the poor, gentleman sportsmanand pinball proprietor, Fletcher never swings with the seasons. His stripedvest, his busy walk, and his eagerness to turn an honest nickel are stablelandmarks in a changing world.
At the end of the day there is a comfortable insulation to be had from reading a book you don't have to read. In the Tower Room the chairs are deepand the ceiling is very high and very dim in the thin light. The windows areopen, now in April, and the night air is cool and pleasant. The print goes bywith scarcely a ripple, in patterns matched by the patterned chairsthe patterned book-backs ranged on the shelves, and the patterned tilt of reading orsleeping heads. Tobacco and the grace of the English language go softly,belying the headlines, with the smell of spring and the end of a day in April.
