my part I had done nothing concrete to help him. I had an impulse to write an answer, but the impulse vanished immediately as I did not have anything adequate to say.
I really began to forget him; his face no longer appeared so frequently in my memory. But in less than ten days after I got his letter I suddenly began to receive the Academic Weekly published in the city of S. I rarely read these things, but since they were mailed to me, I naturally glanced through them. These reminded me of Lien-shu, for there were often poems and other items about him in the Weekly, such as "A visit to Mr. Lien-shu on a Snowy Night," "A gathering in the Study of Advisor Lien-shu," and the like. In the column headed "Chats of an Academician" there were frequent accounts of Lien-shu's oddities, now described as anecdotes and there was always a suggestion that "an unusual man always has his unusual ways."
I did not know why it was but while I was receiving these reminders of Lien-shu his face grew more and more vague in my memory. Yet at the same time I felt more strongly bound to him and often experienced for him an anxiety that I could not understand. In the spring the Weekly ceased to come. Meanwhile the Shan-yang Weelkly Student began to publish serially a long article entitled "Truth behind Humors." In it the writer alluded to the unsavory activities of certain persons which well-informed people had known about and deplored for a long time. I was among these certain persons and again I found it necessary to be extremely careful, to take care not even to let cigarette smoke fly out of my window. Such caution kept one busy and enforced inactivity. I ceased to think about Lien-shu. I might say that I had really forgotten him.
In spite of all my efforts to be discreet, I did not last
