Some years ago a scientist announced that it was possible to cut the head from off the body and allow the intellect to exist without nourishment of any king. George Bernard Shaw thought the conceit a quaint one, it would save his getting dressed in the morning and allow him to exert his only important function unhampered, so he toyed idly with the idea in the columns of the London Times. Mr. Shaw is still at large. In direct antithesis we have Thomas Hardy, writing in the fullness of his fatalism "that thought is a disease of the flesh." The Vagabond will not sit in judgment over either of the gentleman. He has lost all interest in Mr. Shaw since he trundled his apple cart from Warsaw to New York at a considerable financial remuneration. But he is very interested in the door Thomas Hardy.

He is the example of a man upon whom the land has made a profound impression. No one who has visited the Wessex country can fall to feel the gloom and sadness that clings to the moorland. All of his novels reflect this sombre tone, and in one the moor itself assumes a vigorous personality, becomes a definite character. Today Mr. Hersey will talk in Emerson 211 at 2 o'clock upon the Hardy Country. He has taken many new pictures during the last summer which will enlighten the provincial and refresh the memory of the cosmopolite. Mr. Hersey has the great gift of combining the country of which he talks with the characters about which the authors have written. The result is that Tess lives her tragic life before you, and you pause with Mr. Hersey to watch the straggler on the read at twilight while the heath embrowns itself against the sky.