Spring is the season of the Vagabond. It is then that he wakes from his boozy hibernation and begins his hegiras to the pools of Truth. But this year the groundhogs have deceived him, and the Vagabond awakes to find himself in a bitter world of snow, and snow-removers, and more snow. Sitting at his fire with a cheerful glass, he tries to forget, and fancies himself in ancient Attica where it is spring now and the Gods are smiling on humanity. Dinoysus, sitting at Zeus' table, looks down with special pleasure, for this is the time of the spring festival in his honor. Prancing horses and gleaming cars fill Athens as the rich thunder by in their burnished armor and waving plumes. Merchants and students, soldiers and athletes and maidens tossing flower-petals crowd the streets. The dry air is full of sunshine and the smell of flowers and wine-brimming libations to the god Dionysus!

Life quickens in an ectasy of timbrels and dancing. In the great theatre of the Wine God slaves begin to arrive with pillows to await their masters. Behind the scene carpenters are shouting angrily. Euripides, one of the competitors in the play contest, has invented some new stage machinery and sound effects that don't work properly. The audience begins to arrive and the great citizens reclaim their pillows. White-robed thousands stream in to fill the amphitheater row by row up to the top. At last a trumpet blows, the roar of sound fades into silence--and Medea begins her frightening cry against the fate of woman.

Tomorrow at 11 the Vagabond will be in Sever 30 to hear Professor Gulick on Euripides.