The Plastic Age Percy Marks (read full novel txt) 📖

he slipped out of the gymnasium and made one last tour of the campus.

It was a moonlight night, and the campus was mysterious with shadows. The elms shook their leaves whisperingly; the tower of the chapel looked like magic tracery in the moonlight. He paused before Surrey Hall, now dark and empty. Good old Carl.⁠ ⁠… Carl and Cynthia? He wondered.⁠ ⁠… Pudge had roomed there, too. He passed on. Keller Hall, Cynthia and Norry.⁠ ⁠… “God, what a beast I was that night. How white Norry was⁠—and Cynthia, too,” Cynthia again. She’d always be a part of Sanford to him. On down to the lake to watch the silver path of the moonlight and the heavy reflections near the shore. Swimming, canoeing, skating⁠—he and Cynthia in the woods beyond.⁠ ⁠… On back to the campus, around the buildings, every one of them filled with memories. Four years⁠—four beautiful, wonderful years.⁠ ⁠… Good old Sanford.⁠ ⁠…

Midnight struck. Someone turned a switch somewhere. The Japanese lanterns suddenly lost their colors and faded to gray balloons in the moonlight. Some men were singing on the Union steps. It was a few seniors, Hugh knew; they had been singing for an hour.

He stood in the center of the campus and listened, his eyes full of tears. Earnestly, religiously, the men sang, their voices rich with emotion:

“Sanford, Sanford, mother of men,
Love us, guard us, hold us true.
Let thy arms enfold us;
Let thy truth uphold us.
Queen of colleges, mother of men⁠—
Alma mater⁠—Sanford⁠—hail!
Alma-mater⁠—Hail!⁠—Hail!”

Hugh walked slowly across the campus toward the Nu Delta house. He was both happy and sad⁠—happy because the great adventure was before him with all its mystery, sad because he was leaving something beautiful behind.⁠ ⁠…

Colophon

The Plastic Age
was published in 1924 by
Percy Marks.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Paul King
and is based on a transcription produced in 2005 by
Scott G. Sims and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
The Young Man,
a painting completed in circa 1898 by
Thomas Eakins.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
March 16, 2021, 8:30 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/percy-marks/the-plastic-age.

The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.

Uncopyright

May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

Copyright pages exist to tell you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S. public domain. The U.S. public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S. to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions.

Copyright laws are different around the world. If you’re not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook.

Non-authorship activities performed on public domain items⁠—so-called “sweat of the brow” work⁠—don’t create a new copyright. That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks L3C, its contributors, and the contributors to this ebook release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the underlying works, which, though believed to already be in the U.S. public domain, may not yet be in the public domain of other countries. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.