The Student Vagabond

Once, when he was in the Grade Schools, the Vagabond was found carefully engraving a heart, embracing appropriate initials, on the cover of his desk. The knife is now lost, the owner of the initials is now forgotten, along with a hundred others, but what the teacher said still rings in his ears as loudly and crassly as the day when first she said it. The phrase she used is so old as to be termed a "saw", "Fools names like fools faces oft are seen in public places". Not very funny, not very new, but biting.

This same phrase came leaping back, clear as a Tiffany diamond, to the old fellow when he dropped into a Holworthy room the other day. There on the mantel deep in the white panelling were the hieroglyphics of a multitude. There was a G. M. '00, and O. G. '91. There were full names and first names, surnames and nicknames all carefully wrought and delicately traced. Only one was left unfinished, as if perchance the carver had been called away to Boston, and upon his return had forgotten his work so carefully begun. There is lay a precious fragment like the Venus at the Louvre.

There was something sad and sentimental about all these names. They left behind a tale all their own, a tale half finished and inarticulate. Vaguely, the Vagabond thought of Gray in his church yard erecting for himself false gods. How many of these craftsmen had gone out to live unwept, unhonored, and unsung. How many had left only crude initials to tell the world that they had lived. How many, when looking back through the years, must feel that the only lance that they had broken in the tournament of life was a penknife on a Holworthy dado. But there was some great names as well. Here was a classmate of his father's, here an industrial magnate, and here--could it be--a master of the wood cut.

And now the Vagabond's mind ran on until it reached the present. What could the inmates of a house plan upon departing leave behind them? What footprints on the sands of time? Would a man dare to touch the smooth serenity of a Dunster fireplace? Could he scrawl on H. A. Q. '32 upon a new white slab. Alas, what chance has any man to leave behind him a little unremembered act, to write his name upon the panels of the future? Such are the penalties of sophistication, such the trials of luxury. Men will come, remain, and depart like the seal in Bering sea and no man will know their path. And as he left the Vagabond bethought him, "Give me the days of knife and paper cutter, take back the Parietal Regulations and the thumb tacks".

TODAY

10 o'clock

"Alexander II: Foreign Policies," Mr. Vernadsky, Boylston.

12 o'clock

"Universals," Professor Whitehead, Emerson F.

"Religious Developments of 17th Century England." Professor Whitney, Emerson 211.

Monday

9 o'clock

"Oxford Movement," Professor Rollins, Emerson F.

11 o'clock

"The English Masque," Professor Rollins, Emerson H.

"The Annexation of Hawaii," Professor Baxter, Harvard 1.

"Italian Gothic Architecture," Professor Edgell, Fogg Large Room.

12 o'clock

"Chemical Effects of Electric Currents," Professor Black, Jefferson Physics Laboratory, 250.

"Chopin and the Rise of the Piano," Professor Hill, Music Building.

"Market Systems of the 16th and 17th Centuries," Professor Usher, Widener U.

"Sienese Painting," Dr. Rowland, Fogg Large Lecture Room.

"The Eve of St. Mark," Professor Lowes, Emerson J.

2 o'clock

"The Book of Macleod," Professor Porter, Fogg Small Room.