The Student Vagabond

The bow lies quiet on the broken strings. The gilded slender of Louis XIV lies dark and unremembered. The last white carnation has withered in the silk lapel. The last, late debutante has stayed her minute and departed.

Christmas, vacation, snow, carols, rum, and New Years have come and gone their way, alone and unattended. A season has died in the night.

But another marches in to take up the burden, for while much is taken much still abides. Back Bay trails off to the Vincent Club where "us girls are getting up a show." The last straggler has returned to Cambridge in a belated effort to gird up his loins. Harvard's world has changed, it has gone to work. The Mid-years have advanced upon the Yard.

The weary senior wonders vaguely what good the last four months of college are. Four more months are not going to increase his knowledge much. He's marking time and a dull experience it is with no band to set the tempo.

Juniors wander into Widener and are rather amazed by it. There are so many books, so many tables, so many people, so little time. But he sits down to work, he's loafed long enough.

And the sophomore, ah there's your gay dog. He has looked into the bright face of danger and smiled a challenge. There is still a week more much to do, oh so much to do. And there are any number of good reviews being given.

Then at last the Freshmen. But November hours are hardly over. But we didn't know. But we should have been told. But we weren't told. A bit like the Light Brigade they advance, and a bit like the Light Brigade they will return.

And there is too the Vagabond. There is little enough for him to do. No lectures, few concerts; only the library, vast, dust encrusted, darkest Widener. It is a dreary period for him. But what can he do, what can anyone do? The Vagabond will take refuge in poetry "for God he knows and what must be, must be." He like the others must hitch up his belt, try not to think too much of the Vincent Club, and "say neither it is good, nor it is bad; but only it is here."