The Vagabond idled over the rail of bridge, concealed from the vulgar gaze by the gathering dusk and by the bulky base of the great salt-shaker pillar. The subway trains, momentarily elevated, flashed by, each square of light framing the back of a head, a neck and a pair of shoulders. Twelve minutes from the South Station, said the Rollo Book, in the misty past when the Vagabond made his first trip to Cambridge. As inaccurate as the catalogue estimates of laboratory hours. Twelve minutes to find the subway steps from the train concourse and twelve more underground totalled twenty-four. Then there were the fourteen minutes consumed by the taxi driver in taking the Vagabond from Harvard Square to Smith Halls (obs.) via Shady Hill. Total, thirty-eight minute. Thirty-eight. Nineteen hundred thirty eight, class of. Incredible!

There must be many thirty-eights on that subway train flashing by. In ones and twos and threes. From Hartford, Conn., Philadelphia, Pa., and Okmulgee, Okla. And from Roxbury, East Boston and Revere. Come to leap into the meat-chopper. Come to wear their young lives away on Andromache and Karl Heinrich. Come to strut before Brattle brats and grovel before Deans. Come to sublimate their young instincts on Soldiers Field and the River Charles. Come to sublimate their young instincts on Soldiers Field and the River Charles. Come to write feeble pish for the Lampoon and pseudo-esoteric banalities for the Advocate. Come to study the nature of fine whiskies in final clubs. Come to get skulls cracked by the constabulary in City Square.

The Vagabond made the faintest discernible motion to brush away a tear, but years of discipline asserted themselves. He braced up and adjusted his cowl about his shoulders, against the tiny suggestion of a Fall chill. Slowly he descended the steps to the water's edge, to the conceald spot under the graceful arch of the bridge that serves him in summer as an anchorite's cell, against the day when the ivory walls of Memorial Hall Tower would be brushed free of cobwebs and it for winter's occupancy.

A full between two trains, a moment of silence in the traffic, and a wayfarer cocked an incredulous ear to catch the faint strains of Gregorian chant coming from under the bridge. . .

"Misererel . . ."