The tactful double knock aroused Vag from his delicious reverie. He laid aside his copy of the latest New Yorker, and the physics text reposing beneath it in his lap, and lumbered towards the door. Probably another solicitor. His friends didn't tap on the door; they banged on it. Well, he had made short work of that Student Council fellow last night, and he felt prepared to face any attack on his privacy and purse this evening.

The grey-clad figure who faced him over the threshold didn't look like a solicitor, though. In fact, Vag decided that his closest counterpart was the bronze gentleman who sat on a marble pedestal in front of University Hall. His prepared speech beginning "I always send my laundry home . . ." died on his lips, and when the gentlemen turned towards the corridor and beckoned him to follow, he hurriedly reached for his coat. There was a curious whistling sensation in his ears, and suddenly he found that he was again facing John Harvard, for there was no doubt about it now, but on one wall of the narrow room hung a plaque saying "Harvard Student Council." The elderly divine cleared his throat: "I don't often do this," he observed. "It's such a drain on one's energy. Now that Harvard only allows one fund drive a year, I feel that I must conserve my strength for this single effort, but I can remember when . . . See here, Vagabond, let me show you where this money that my young friends are asking for is spent, and how little they've been getting."

He opened a big ledger and put on a pair of thick, horn-rimmed glasses. "Young man, you must know firstly that this one meagre contribution protects you from the appeals of every local and national charity, including the greater Boston Community Fund, but that last year this contribution amounted to only 25 cents per undergraduate." Vag thought of beautiful House dining halls, and rich meals, and he sighed in sympathy. "The employees of this great university, the maids and biddies and watchmen, contributed $4650 last year to the community fund, but undergraduates gave only $2200." Vag shuddered at that forbidding countenance, and discovered to his dismay that it was easier to float through the walls of Brooks House than to sink through the floor.

Relentlessly John Harvard ran on, "This Student Council that your were so unwilling to support not only pays for your charities, but it gives scholarships to needy students in the College, it pays for much of the work of Phillips Brooks House, it underwrites all Freshman activities, and meets the expenses of upperclass elections. And with only five cents out of every dollar that you're going to contribute," he shook his bony finger in Vag's face, "the Council maintains itself. It is the only body democratically representing undergraduates like yourself. Its labors as critic and adviser to the administration, represented by dozens of surveys and reports, made possible that N.Y.A. job that keeps you in pocket-money this year.

"And that's not all." The venerable founder waved his hand, and the grey stone towers of Yale hove into sight. Vag found himself suspended invisibly but comfortably over a long table in the office of the Yale Student Council. Green bills were piled in little heaps on the table, and scattered over the floor. "They got nearly $20,000 last year," said Vag's guide, also suspended, "and we, with more undergraduates, collected a mere $7000." It was enough. As soon as the rushing noise had died away, and Vag was in his room again, he would not only write out a cheque for that unpaid pledge. He would double it.