The whole thing was a bit thick.

The Vagabond was sitting at a small table in a dimly lighted corridor of an out of the way stack of Widener Library. He had been there for several weeks, now, slaving over what he hoped would some day turn into a Senior thesis. He did not particularly care for his thesis, for he had a particular dread of being shut up in a poorly lighted place for hours on end, compelled to pore through book after book, article after article, searching for the headwaters of the fountain of knowledge, a spring which often seemed as elusive as the fountain of youth once sought by Ponce de Leon.

Perhaps the Vagabond was suffering from a slight attack of claustrophobia. Certainly the surroundings were enough to make most people who cared for the great open spaces, mountains, prairies, or the sea, go a bit whacky. Once, when a little tiny boy, he had been taken by his parents to visit the county jail of his home town in Connecticut. It was a dark redbrick building, ivy-clad, and punctuated with tiny windows covered with lattice grille-work in strong steel. There was something bout that window at the end of the corridor of the library that reminded him of that old eighteenth century county jail. The steel book-racks, the dull concrete floors of the corridors served to heighten the impression that he was in prison, tortured by the Gods and Harvard college for a number of weeks, all for the cause of a thesis.

With a wrench the Vagabond tore his mind from reveries and returned to his book of the moment. It was a history of the Irish Rebellion, telling how noble young men and patriots suffered torture, prison, and even death at the hands of the British during the years of the World War and after, all for the sake of freedom. Prisons fouler than Widener were endured by these youthful idealists, and hunger strikes were their only means of getting out of jail. The Vagabond was not feeling the pangs of hunger. That would not come for hours, when he could lay off for supper. On he must read through the tale of other peoples' struggles and sufferings and defeats. At least one could get a decent meal and still work in Widener--they had no stopped that yet. And after all, he was imprisoned voluntarily--no one compelled him to come to Harvard in the first place or to slave and moil and toil and strain his eyes in a library hemmed in by windows plated with steel. He had sentenced himself to this incarceration.

The Vagabond was not getting on with his book. Perhaps lie had better take time out for a cigarette. He closed over the covers of the volume, but in doing so his eye happened to catch on the inside front page. Here was pasted a dedication notice, to the memory of some past Harvard graduate who had left money to the library. Underneath this bookplate was another notice. The Vagabond gasped as he read the following legend:

This book was stolen from Harvard College Library.

It was later recovered.

The thief was sentenced to two years at hard labor. J.S.A.

The Vagabond will break his long Lecture fast when he bears ex-President Ricardo J. Alfaro of Panama speak tonight at 8 o'clock in Emerson Hall on "The Achievements of the Pan American Conference."