The Vagabond

"I enquired for the works of this author, but could learn nothing more than that he was considered a madman and that his music was like himself."

Beethoven, the Vagabond reflected, was a typical Harvard man. He had all the earmarks. In the first place, he was almost constantly in love. Arrogant and tactless, without any graces of appearance or manner, he nevertheless completely vanquished the Venetian belles. He spent fortunes on fashionable clothes, he took dancing lessons, he was often at court-in short, he got around; and one friend once said of him that he could make a conquest "very difficult if not impossible for an Adonis." But when he proposed to the beautiful Magdalena Willmann, she laughed and termed him ugly and half crazy. . .

Such a man intrigues Vag. Everyone knows that he went deaf before he was thirty and still composed some of the most superlative music of all time. But few know that, in his early life, he was superbly egotistic. From his great teacher, Haydn, he insisted that he learned nothing. He made enemies because of his overbearing manner as fast as he made friends with his music; he disdained to hear Mozart's operas "lest I forfeit some of my originality." "I want none of your moral (precepts)," he once wrote, "for Power is the morality of men who loom above the others, and it is also mine." "I look upon them (mankind) only as instruments upon which I play when I feel so disposed. . ." And yet, "O ye men who thinks or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do ye wrong me; you do not know the secret causes of my seeming. . ."

This morning at 10 the Vagabond will at last return to serious business. Having completely emerged from The Depths, he is planning to wander up to the Music building and hear more about a composer who has fascinated him. He has heard that the Music 1 devotees have arrived at that point; he knows (off the record) that, among other things, the last movement of the Second Symphony will be played before the hour is over; and he wants to see if that certain student with the incredible laugh is still spicing the proceedings with his outbursts of merriment.