The Student Vegabond

If it were not for the Charles, Harvard would lie cramped between an ugly industrial city bristling with smoke-stacks and neon signs, and the cool green lawns of Brattle Street. If there were no river, men would grow vicious with no place to walk, and they would sit in smoke-filled rooms and dart like angry wasps at each other buzzing invective in ever-changing patterns. Under the blanket of heat that descends over the steeples and towers of Cambridge in the afternoon, the Charles sleeps while agile youths flit on the mirrored surface like water-spiders.

The Vagabond, knowing fellow, has realized that the Charles is not a clean river, or a large river, or a river at all, but he remains attached to it remembering how, although it would deny everything, it has worked sorrow and pleasure. In the fall when Cambridge twilight's are a smoky blue, white-shirted harriers jog along the winding course to Watertwon and back, while men in shells pump up and down like regulated pistons. When Dartmouth comes to town, girls in bright colors walk over the bridge, heels clicking on the walk like little hammers. When there is something shining and invisible in the air over the Stadium, the Vegabond feels as if he were walking on tiptoe. In the gray winter twilight there is the ring of steel on ice and urchins skating, and when the plain of the river is windy in March, and the white birches look naked in the light of the riding moon, the Vagabond walks and thinks in inscrutable things. He may even break into a run if the night is cool and laugh when the wind snatches his hair and makes his throat dry.

But in the Summer he is sad, for what once was may never be again, and he can only smile whimsically when there is scurrying along the bank as the police launch passes.