The deceptive fractiousness of the March climate in New England has lured the Vagabond into such indiscretions in the matter of overcoats, that he has contrived to contract one of those annoyingly persistent coughs which characterize Spring. He is endeavoring, however, by the use of lotions and liniments to subdue the ailment before the first Dowse lecture on Monday evening. Since Professor Kittredge is giving the series this year, the Vagabond will go to Sanders Theatre at 8 o'clock thoroughly equipped with cough drops, knowing the aversion of the erudite professor to the noisy accompaniment of a spring cold.

Professor Kittredge's series of lectures on "The Appreciation of Shakespeare" brings to the Vagabond's mind the story of Thomas Dowse, the founder of the lectures.

Thomas Dowse was proprietor of a "wool-puller's" or leather dresser's shop in Cambridgeport, where he lived and worked until his death at the age of eighty-four.

Speaking of himself when an old man, Dowse said, "Until I was twenty-one I had never received more than twenty-five dollars a month in pay; I had never spent five dollars in travel; I had never owned a pair of boots; but I had collected a library of several hundred books, will bound."

The executors of his estate, charged with distributing part of his fortune for "literary, scientific and charitable purposes," gave $10,000 to the city of Cambridge, with which to secure lecture who should give "every year forever" courses of lectures upon scientific or literary subjects.

Today at 9 o'clock the Vagabond will attend Professor Yeoman's lecture at Harvard 2 on "State Control Over interstate Commerce," of particular interest because of the claims of Professor W. Z. Ripley recently published in the Atlantic Monthly that all corporations engaged in any form of interstate commerce are required by an old statute annually to fill out financial statements income accounts and reports of operation for the benefit of the Federal Trade Commission.