The Youth of Parnassus and Other Stories - 1895 -- Contents -- The Youth of Parnassus The Will to Live. I. - The Will to Live. 11. - The Claim of the Past - A Broken Journey - The Sub-Warden - Idyll - - Buller Intervening - The Optimist - - . The Yoath of Parnassw The Youth of Parnassus H E came straight to Oxford from his American home, Parnassus City, a town in the Western State of Indiana. The first time Foley saw him was one wet October evening, when, splashing across the quadrangle towards his rooms, he noticed a large umbrella moving through the dripping twilight-an umbrella which, from its undecided motion, must belong, he had told himself, to some tourist, who, in spite of the rain and darkness, was finishing a day of sight-seeing at 4 The Youth of Parnassus St. Marys. But when the umbrella collapsed in front of his own staircase, and Foley saw the spectacles and pale face of a young man who turned to enter there, he decided that it must be an agent, come to collect money for missions or something of the kind. And as he followed upstairs, in the wet footprints of the feet he could still hear mounting above him, he asked himself with vague annoyance, what right they had-people like that-to push themselves into the rooms of Oxford men. The melancholy footsteps went on till they reached the top nor did Foley hear them again descend. Soon after he was told that an American had come into College, and was living above him and when he went to call, he recognized, in the person who awkwardly rose to receive him, the young man he had taken for a mission agent in the rain that evening. A thin, small young man, in a long, The Youth of Parnassus s black broadcloth coat of provincial cut, he seemed at first sight nothing but the traditional Western American Foley had read of in books, or seen in the theatre sometimes-a student who looked curiously out of place in that old panelled room The young Englishman talked to him as best he could, asking the questions always asked of a new-corner questions which this one answered with the usual shyness, but in a very unusual voice and accent. He had just come from America he had left there on the sixth, He had come to study under Dr. Joseph at the new Methodist College. Dr. Joseph had arranged for him to come to St. Marys their own College wasnt built yet. Foley asked if he thought he would like Oxford. Yes, sir, the other replied, drawing a large handkerchief from his coat-tails, I guess I will though, he added 6 The Youth of Parnassus cautiously after a moment, it does seem kind of old and mouldy. Foley thought he had done his duty in calling, and meant for the future to see as little as possible of his new neighbour. And yet there had been something pleasant and sensitive in his face, he remembered afterwards and at times he was haunted by the thought of this stranger sitting as he had found him, alone and lonely in the room upstairs, with two or three books in the empty shelves, a few photographs of home that made the mantelpiece and bare walls look all the more homeless and unfriendly. Now and then he would hear footsteps above moving vaguely about, or he would meet the American on the stairs, or see him walking out alone, and at last, out of kindness, he went again to call. Before long he began to take a certain The Youth of Parnassus 7 liking to Sutton, and would often go up in the evenings with a cigarette to his rooms. To the young Englishman the American was certainly a curious and amusing study... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.