"And that is the reason"--this with an unusual amount of energy--"why I say there is no Harvard Man." The Vagabond whipped out the last two words with capitals, putting them in vocal italics. He was warming to his subject now, growing the warmer as the circle around him grew the larger. Pleased and flattered, he, the center of attention for once. These newcomers. He knew a few things which they did not. And they seemed willing to listen to him.

"A Princeton Man, yes. You could hardly miss him. Tweeds and a good pipe and that sort of thing. He's handsome in an orthodox manner-- looks a bit like a collegiate clothes-model in Esquire. Fresh, the lady novelists would call him. He likes week-ends and New York, gets sentimental over the Tiger and a glass of beer.

"And the Dartmouth Man." Here the Vagabond grinned, trying to wheedle a polite smile out of his listeners. "Wait until you see him going down Boylston Street to a football game. He'll probably have on a racoon coat and he'll look as though he ought to be carrying a silver hip-flask. His girl will be wearing an all-green outfit, even though she looks like the devil in green. Maybe he'll be shouting something about 'Men of Dartmouth'!

"But no Harvard Man."

"Why?" A voice from the cortex of the circle.

This was proper bait for the Vagabond. He tore after it like the tail after a kite. "Because Harvard is a conglomeration of every type," he stated with finality. "You can't let her go with Indifference. You have to use every adjective in the vocabulary.

"Harvard draws all kinds from all places. Look around the Union and you'll see them; recognize them by their clothes, their hair-cuts, the way they use their hands. Brilliant scholars, lots of these, every fourth man the head of his secondary school class. Athletes, six-foot-one, one hundred eighty, in by the skin of their teeth. Hell-raisers who already know every bar that stays open after hours. High-school boys in dark serge; and prep-school boys wearing tweeds and plaids with the proper air. Social registerites. Dilletantes. Radicals.

"Harvard changes them. But not to the same pattern, not according to the same specifications. They go out into the world as different as they came in, and they contrive to make Harvard Man mean something different to every other person.

"The Middle Western college student talks to him about the rights of neutrals rather than about women. Other college students let him go as a bloody snob. The Boston city father labels him a terror, to be put down with tear-gas and billies on a balmy spring evening.

"To a Chicago soap-maker, he's a dangerous Communist. To a Cambridge townie, he's dirt and offal and something to beat up in a dark alley. To a society matron, he's completely eligible and quite charming. To another drunk at the bar, he's a good fellow.

"You know, I've been around a bit, further than the New Lecture Hall. The Vagabond was eager now, champing at the bit. He was preparing to tell how he--typical in his own opinion--had been received variously out in the world.

"Oh yes?" The question was merely polite, not very interrogatory.

Suddenly the Vagabond noticed that the circle was dwindling. Suddenly he recalled that this might be a good time to stop. He had a whole year to go. He gave an excuse--a lame one--and then he was off.