Water Resources People and Issues
they went back three generations to find out if you had any Jewish blood. It
was that kind of a snobbish society. I know they don't like me to say that, but
it's a fact.
Anyway, I
a good swimmer. I used to swim a mile a day. When I first
started I was swimming side stroke and any kind of a stroke, and I learned all
the strokes, and eventually swam the crawl because it was the most efficient.
And when I got to Hopkins I did go out for swimming, and I was on the
freshman swimming team. I could do that the first year but the course schedule
was so rigorous in the sophomore year that I had to give it up. I also tried to
get into ROTC, not so much because I wanted to be a soldier in the tradition
of my father and grandfather, but because they paid you the last two years, and
that would have been very important.
I remember going to see Colonel Gregory Hoisington. don't know whether
he was a Corps of Engineers officer or not-and asking him if I could enroll,
and he said, "No, no, we just can't-your leg's shorter and you walk with a
limp and we just couldn't have you in the service. And I said, "Well, gee, I
can do everything. I can walk miles and do this, that, and he said, "No, I'm
sorry, but we can't take you."
I had to take something else to fill out my schedule, so I took French reading.
Having had French in high school, after one semester I absolved the
requirements for French in the Ph.D. I would have had to take an exam, but
they certified that I could take it, so I had some time off, which I promptly
used to play bridge over in Levering Hall.
Upon entering Johns Hopkins they gave you placement exams and I absolved
taking English composition. This permitted me to go right into an advanced
English literature course with the person who, I believe, is the best teacher I
ever had, Captain Kilbourne, formerly of the British Army. He may have been
a U.S. citizen by that time, but he lived and breathed English literature from
With my having had a kind of a literary background from all the
reading that I had done, but not having been very organized, he really helped
me organize it, although years later, when I looked at some of the papers I
wrote, they seemed rather insipid and immature, but still it did help to really
inculcate the love of English literature in me.
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