AIR: Builder of Big Ships

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He is also dominant in his relaxations, among them poetry. One of his favorite poets is Longfellow, whom he can spout by the yard, accurately and with feeling. If an occasional modernist happens in while Rube Fleet is declaiming his favorites, that is just too bad for the modernist. Rube Fleet knows what he likes, and likes it.

He knows other poets besides Longfellow. To a recent group of visitors he suddenly declaimed from another favorite, Stephen Phillips' Marpessa. With narrowed eye and deepening voice the Major intoned from memory:

Wounded with beauty in the summer night

Young Idas tossed upon his couch and

cried

"Marpessa, O Marpessa." From the dark

The floating smell of flowers invisible,

The mystic yearning of the garden wet,

The moonless-passing night—into his brain,

Wandered, until he rose and outward leaned. . . .

Finally he bobbled a line, picked up the book for the first time and in a half-murmured apology said, "Haven't read it but twice." When he had finished reading, he slapped the book shut, began to talk about his ships' range, design, to pour out an endless flood of figures, dates, facts.

On the floor under his desk is a button which makes the Venetian blinds go up or down. Reuben Fleet enjoys working it. It startles visitors.