The Vagabond was, they said, cynical, but they were wrong. There are excuses in this mortal life for anything, if they must be given, and while it is better to let the scoffing charge pass unnoticed, cynical is a hard word. Everyone may go by a softer name but the cynic. The sinister, cheerful lawbreaker who warms your entrails is an "importer." He who steals your trashy purse because you pay safely by check, is no usurer, but a respectable banker. So along the line, gentlemen all, does the world avoid rasping unpleasantness, except the cynic, whose avocation of cavity is unmitigated. Now there are facts, and there are reasons, and let them be heard.

The Vagabond loves not a cold ride through tortuous traffic, even though he may find a goal in a new haven. No more is he thrilled by the prospect of a makeshift bed in the room of one to him had stranger. Even more reluctantly does he embrace the task of wresting precious tickets from the hands of those whose God-given work it would seem to be to keep them hidden in the filling cases on Harvard Street. Then there is the bitter disappointment when he reaches for the flagon, and finds only the flask.

So, there are reasons, next let there be facts. The change from the bullfinch and wren to the gargoyle is good, as is, in the light of evolutionary abstraction, any change. More than this the Vagabond is an incorrigible romanticist to whose lights the very juices of a glamorous spectacle are good. He is bewitched by the surging crowds, maddened by a foolish, over-emphasized sport. He falls under the enchantment of fair ladyes, breathing an exotic Parisian perfume (twenty-five dollars an ounce in the year of our Lord nineteen-hundred and twenty-nine)and he remembers one, perhaps, who was intelligent; intelligent, and must the Vagabond confess, unattainable. So shall the eynic recant, with only the words, that if he heard a lecture on Saturday, it shall be from the uncomfortable vantage point of the Eli's fence.