With almost three years of a busy and hectic life behind him and still no signs of gray hairs or rheumatism, the Vagabond has begun to feel that some sort of spirit of eternal youth has come to his support. Ashamed as he may be of such indications of immaturity at most times of the year, the holiday season now in full swing makes him completely at home.

For let the grown-ups make as much fuss as they please over their Savings Clubs and last-minute-shopping rushes; Christmas remains always a children's festival that no adult can thoroughly appreciate. Other holidays, decreed in all solemnity by the powers that be in honor of birthdays or battles, are occasions enough for the elders to take a day off and indulge in parades and other pleasant diversions. The youngest generations wait for the last of the yearly series to come into their own. To be sure, they seize upon such opportunities as the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, with sufficient alacrity, but their parents always dominate the scene with the dignity of "We do solemnly proclaim edicts and displays of eloquence that serve to remind forgetful citizens of what a capable fellow their mayor really is.

Christmas is quite another thing. All the brains that have been racked and paper wasted in vain attempts to analyse the spirit of Christmas show how little any of us know about it after the first ten magical years of our life are over. It needs a supreme disregard of physical limitations and an indifference to the more material things of the world that only a few divinely gifted men retain after they have lost their ignorance of them. Dickens knew the secret when he wrote that spiritual epic "The Christmas Carol". Not many Bob Cratchits can quite forget the next rent bill even in the midst of the feast, and the faintest savor of the mundane changes the Olympian ambrosia to a mess of porridge that is only a little more appetising than the every-day fare.

The present generation has also a man who both possesses this magic power and has mastered the difficulties of transmitting it. Sir James Barrie in his "Peter Pan" has turned the trick, and the Vagabond takes this opportunity of announcing that it has recently appeared for the first time in book form (Charles Scribner's Sons; $1.251. After spending a little time in a perusal of this famous work freed from the vagaries of stock companies and the limitations of the mechanical stage the reader should find himself much more tolerant towards the six year old cousin who confidently sent him a Santa Claus letter three pages long.

Leaving such pastimes to the idle moments of the week-end, the lectures being offered this morning include.

TODAY

9 o'clock

"The Muscle System of Vertebrates," Professor Rand, Zoology Laboratory 11.

10 o'clock

"Washington Irving", Professor, Murdock, Harvard 2.

"The Limits of Government", Professor Perry, Emerson A.

"Paul I", Professor Karpovitch, Sever 25.

11 o'clock

"Dante's Convivio: IV", Professor Grandgent, Sever 19.

12 o'clock

"Chausson", Professor Hill, Music Building.