Musical Club, a combination of vocalists and instrumentalists, and the occasion of the practice was a concert to be given before the élite of Boston on the first night of the Christmas vacation.
Then additionally, there was Blah-Blah. This was a slender booklet of undergraduate wit, which appeared monthly under an invariably pursed-lipped female cover. Jock belonged to its editorial staff. Among other duties, he was expected to contribute assorted items to its pages every month, and he had long since established a reputation as a source of bubbling light verse, short artful skits, and "He: She:" jokes. There was a chuckle in everything of his that appeared in the magazine. He left the sentimental poetry and the really artistic bits of writing to contributors who felt them less deeply than he, and hence could more readily laugh them off. About the campus he was deemed a budding humorist, and no one knew nor guessed the nature of the pages and pages of material he wrote and did not publish, but hid away.
During early December he conceived and executed "The Confessions of a Dormitory Cockroach," to be run in four hilarious instalments. He did three jingles, "Ode to a Wastebasket," "Peter the Petter" and "Girls Who Get None of My Time," and one playlet entitled "The Wages of Gin is Breath." These went direct to Blah-Blah. He also composed during this period, twenty-seven poems that did not go to Blah-Blah. Of each of these, Yvonne was the leitmotif. . . . He wrote her letters also, but futilely, for he knew not where to send them. His first one, mailed to her at the Park Avenue apartment, had been returned marked "Present address unknown." The only communication he had had from her was a package containing the photograph he had said he liked
