THE CRIME

Came dawn. And the Student Vagabond reached for his Encyclopedia, Shelley's "Works", and a cigarette. And then, helter skelter, he went roaming around the Yard in his cavalier pink robe de nuit searching the most delightful little lectures possible.

"I can", he said, beginning to notice the thawing ice as it crept along the romonesque proportions of his sole, approached the Gothic outlines of a toe, "I can make Carver and Ripley and all of the boys so happy by quoting . . .

"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss."

And Tucker Murray will never forget the 'gulls': they are so Elizabethan!"

So he scooped up the prettiest little split infinitives, the cutest conceits, the most just positively gorgeous non sequiturs and took them all to John Harvard's statue to make him green with envy.

And then out of the stillness of the Cambridge dawn came a report of twelve well aimed guns fired by twelve well maimed seniors under command of their Generals, singing

"Some there are who may delight,

In this beggar, think him right,

Fondly read and trot to every blooming class.

Mix a lecture on old France

With that nonmenal of Kant's,

Give an apple to dear Kitty for a passe

But when April is ahead,

Later, May, even more dread,

One must predicate the Vagabond an ass.

So forgive our well aimed shot;

He is up with Lieber Gott,

Sending vagrants round to Harping 64.

He has swiped the Golden rule,

For the furthering of his drool,

And sane Horace has discovered a new boor.

But at least we now are free,

Reading outlines in our glee,

Education will be our's by May the first.

Then you'll see us going round,

Quite funereal, capped and gowned,

And you'll be so very proud of us you'll burst. X. Crescents.

Which does not show that the undersigned has read "The King's Henchman" with due reverence or he'd have included the lapidary line, "I could do mousily by a crumb of cheese." There are already two schools former and formidable in re the quoted line. One cannot but believe that Miss Millay intended "mousily" to express classic restraint. The other answers that on the contrary "mousily" show a fervid romanticism, for was not "mousily" used by Ooblinskingdorften in his Critique des Souris in which he quaintly puts it. "I under the cheeses will but now be most droneen, yes."

Nor does it show a careful reading of Mr. Lewis' Dunciad Ecclesiastics wherein divers divines do receive a sound verbal lashing as they do well deserve. For one could even cherish a Vagabond after reading of the vices and dirty dealing of the apostolic horde. Also it might be mentioned that a local divine, after reading the first chapter did say, A dull book." He then turned to "Anthony Comstock" and swooned. Perhaps he is the gentle sould whose word is taking the latest output of the Viennese author of "Beatrice" from the shelves of greater and lesser Boston.