Properties
- end_line
- 4247
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-27T17:18:13.527Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4196
- text
- 4017 He was always coming in and sitting down in the back of the room for about a half an
4018 hour. He was supposed to be incognito or something. After a while, he'd be sitting back
4019 there and then he'd start interrupting what old Spencer was saying to crack a lot of corny
4020 jokes. Old Spencer'd practically kill himself chuckling and smiling and all, like as if
4021 Thurmer was a goddam prince or something."
4022 "Don't swear so much."
4023 "It would've made you puke, I swear it would," I said. "Then, on Veterans' Day.
4024 They have this day, Veterans' Day, that all the jerks that graduated from Pencey around
4025 1776 come back and walk all over the place, with their wives and children and
4026 everybody. You should've seen this one old guy that was about fifty. What he did was, he
4027 came in our room and knocked on the door and asked us if we'd mind if he used the
4028 bathroom. The bathroom was at the end of the corridor--I don't know why the hell he
4029 asked us. You know what he said? He said he wanted to see if his initials were still in one
4030 of the can doors. What he did, he carved his goddam stupid sad old initials in one of the
4031 can doors about ninety years ago, and he wanted to see if they were still there. So my
4032 roommate and I walked him down to the bathroom and all, and we had to stand there
4033 while he looked for his initials in all the can doors. He kept talking to us the whole time,
4034 telling us how when he was at Pencey they were the happiest days of his life, and giving
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4035 us a lot of advice for the future and all. Boy, did he depress me! I don't mean he was a
4036 bad guy--he wasn't. But you don't have to be a bad guy to depress somebody--you can be
4037 a good guy and do it. All you have to do to depress somebody is give them a lot of phony
4038 advice while you're looking for your initials in some can door--that's all you have to do. I
4039 don't know. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been all out of breath. He
4040 was all out of breath from just climbing up the stairs, and the whole time he was looking
4041 for his initials he kept breathing hard, with his nostrils all funny and sad, while he kept
4042 telling Stradlater and I to get all we could out of Pencey. God, Phoebe! I can't explain. I
4043 just didn't like anything that was happening at Pencey. I can't explain."
4044 Old Phoebe said something then, but I couldn't hear her. She had the side of her
4045 mouth right smack on the pillow, and I couldn't hear her.
4046 "What?" I said. "Take your mouth away. I can't hear you with your mouth that
4047 way."
4048 "You don't like anything that's happening."
4049 It made me even more depressed when she said that.
4050 "Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don't say that. Why the hell do you say that?"
4051 "Because you don't. You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things.
4052 You don't."
4053 "I do! That's where you're wrong--that's exactly where you're wrong! Why the
4054 hell do you have to say that?" I said. Boy, was she depressing me.
4055 "Because you don't," she said. "Name one thing."
4056 "One thing? One thing I like?" I said. "Okay."
4057 The trouble was, I couldn't concentrate too hot. Sometimes it's hard to
4058 concentrate.
4059 "One thing I like a lot you mean?" I asked her.
4060 She didn't answer me, though. She was in a cockeyed position way the hell over
4061 the other side of the bed. She was about a thousand miles away. "C'mon answer me," I
4062 said. "One thing I like a lot, or one thing I just like?"
4063 "You like a lot."
4064 "All right," I said. But the trouble was, I couldn't concentrate. About all I could
4065 think of were those two nuns that went around collecting dough in those beatup old straw
4066 baskets. Especially the one with the glasses with those iron rims. And this boy I knew at
- title
- Chunk 7