Excerpt from The Presbyterian Choir Singers

This boy, like myself, was loud in speech. That is to say, we swore a good deal -- in all innocence of course -- and by doing so grieved Miss or Mrs. Balaifal so much that she sought to save us while there was still time. To be saved was a thing I for one had no occasion to resent.

Miss Balaifal (I shall call her that from now on, since while I knew her she was certainly single, and since I do not know for sure if she ever married, or for that matter if she ever thought of marrying, or if she ever so much as fell in love -- earlier in life of course, and no doubt with a scoundrel who took the whole matter with a grain of salt) -- Miss Balaifal, as I began to say, was a cultured woman, a reader of the poems of Robert Browning and other poets and a woman of great sensitivity, so that coming out on the porch of her house to hear us talk she could stand so much and no more, and when the limit had been reached, cried out, Boys, boys. You must not use profane language.

Pandro Kolkhozian, on the one hand, seemed to be the most uncouth boy in the world and on the other -- and this was the quality in him which endeared him to me -- the most courteous and thoughtful.