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- 389 blew the roof off. Hardly anybody laughed out loud, and old Ossenburger made out like
390 he didn't even hear it, but old Thurmer, the headmaster, was sitting right next to him on
391 the rostrum and all, and you could tell he heard it. Boy, was he sore. He didn't say
392 anything then, but the next night he made us have compulsory study hall in the academic
393 building and he came up and made a speech. He said that the boy that had created the
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394 disturbance in chapel wasn't fit to go to Pencey. We tried to get old Marsalla to rip off
395 another one, right while old Thurmer was making his speech, but be wasn't in the right
396 mood. Anyway, that's where I lived at Pencey. Old Ossenburger Memorial Wing, in the
397 new dorms.
398 It was pretty nice to get back to my room, after I left old Spencer, because
399 everybody was down at the game, and the heat was on in our room, for a change. It felt
400 sort of cosy. I took off my coat and my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar; and then I put
401 on this hat that I'd bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one
402 of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out
403 of the subway, just after I noticed I'd lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck.
404 The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back--very corny, I'll admit,
405 but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way. Then I got this book I was reading
406 and sat down in my chair. There were two chairs in every room. I had one and my
407 roommate, Ward Stradlater, had one. The arms were in sad shape, because everybody
408 was always sitting on them, but they were pretty comfortable chairs.
409 The book I was reading was this book I took out of the library by mistake. They
410 gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me
411 Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn't. It was a very
412 good book. I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favorite author is my brother D.B., and
413 my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my
414 birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then
415 it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that's
416 always speeding. Only, he's married, the cop, so be can't marry her or anything. Then this
417 girl gets killed, because she's always speeding. That story just about killed me. What I
418 like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. I read a lot of classical books, like
419 The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and
420 mysteries and all, but they don't knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a
421 book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific
422 friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That
423 doesn't happen much, though. I wouldn't mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring
424 Lardner, except that D.B. told me he's dead. You take that book Of Human Bondage, by
425 Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book and all, but I
426 wouldn't want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don't know, He just isn't the kind of guy
427 I'd want to call up, that's all. I'd rather call old Thomas Hardy up. I like that Eustacia Vye.
428 Anyway, I put on my new hat and sat down and started reading that book Out of
429 Africa. I'd read it already, but I wanted to read certain parts over again. I'd only read
430 about three pages, though, when I heard somebody coming through the shower curtains.
431 Even without looking up, I knew right away who it was. It was Robert Ackley, this guy
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