But Amory knew that nothing in the abstract, no theory or generality, ever moved Rahill until he stubbed his toe upon the concrete minutiae of it.
“Haven‘t,” insisted Rahill. “I let people impose on me here and don’t get anything out of it.
I’m the prey of my friends, damn it—do their lessons, get ’em out of trouble, pay ‘em stupid summer visits, and always entertain their kid sisters; keep my temper when they get selfish and then they think they pay me back by voting for me and telling me I’m the ’big man’ of St. Regis’s.
I want to get where everybody does their own work and I can tell people where to go.
I’m tired of being nice to every poor fish in school.”
“You’re not a slicker,” said Amory suddenly.
“A what?”
“A slicker.”
“What the devil’s that?”
“Well, it’s something that—that—there’s a lot of them.
You’re not one, and neither am I, though I am more than you are.”
“Who is one?
What makes you one?”
Amory considered.
“Why—why, I suppose that the sign of it is when a fellow slicks his hair back with water.”
“Like Carstairs?”
“Yes—sure.
He’s a slicker.”
They spent two evenings getting an exact definition.
The slicker was good-looking or clean-looking; he had brains, social brains, that is, and he used all means on the broad path of honesty to get ahead, be popular, admired, and never in trouble.
He dressed well, was particularly neat in appearance, and derived his name from the fact that his hair was inevitably worn short, soaked in water or tonic, parted in the middle, and slicked back as the current of fashion dictated.
The slickers of that year had adopted tortoise-shell spectacles as badges of their slickerhood, and this made them so easy to recognize that Amory and Rahill never missed one.
The slicker seemed distributed through school, always a little wiser and shrewder than his contemporaries, managing some team or other, and keeping his cleverness carefully concealed.
Amory found the slicker a most valuable classification until his junior year in college, when the outline became so blurred and indeterminate that it had to be subdivided many times, and became only a quality.
Amory’s secret ideal had all the slicker qualifications, but, in addition, courage and tremendous brains and talents—also Amory conceded him a bizarre streak that was quite irreconcilable to the slicker proper.
This was a first real break from the hypocrisy of school tradition.
The slicker was a definite element of success, differing intrinsically from the prep school “big man.”
“The Slicker”
“The Big Man”
1.
Clever sense of social values.
1.
Inclined to stupidity and unconscious of social values.
2.
Dresses well.
Pretends that dress is superficial—but knows that it isn’t.
2.
Thinks dress is superficial, and is inclined to be careless about it.
3.
Goes into such activities as he can shine in.
3.
Goes out for everything from a sense of duty.
4.
Gets to college and is, in a worldly way, successful.
4.
Gets to college and has a problematical future.
Feels lost without his circle, and always says that school days were happiest, after all.
Goes back to school and makes speeches about what St. Regis’s boys are doing.
5.
Hair slicked.