Word: vagabonde
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...those who are wont to season the morning's meal with the Attic salt of the Vagabond brace themselves for a more pungent spice today. For this morning the Vagabond is not Touchstone but Hamlet; the cap and bells are put away, and sables are the wear. A great man is passing from our midst: at nine o'clock this morning in New Lecture Hall, Professor C. K. Webster is delivering his last lecture before leaving Harvard College, and the Vagabond would give him homage and Godspeed...
...merely for one man that the Vagabond is moved to unwonted sobriety: with the departure of Professor Webster a long line of the illustrious of history are going too. Returning every Spring to Harvard, he has put sense and motion into what were letters on a printed page, and the shadows of an age that is past, a time that is done have moved among us for a time with the life of contemporaries. Other and excellent lecturers there are at Harvard, but no one else who could reveal more by a roguish shrug, by an ironically poised understatement, than...
Last night the Vagabond lay out on the lawn alone with his flagon beside him scanning the stars. Above the Dipper spilled out the dew and so bright it was that the little superfluous star on the handle could easily be seen. Lord Grey of Falladon, learned that he was going blind when the eyes which five years before "had seen the lights going out all over Europe" could not descry this single star. In the west over the shoulders of the mountain Jupiter glinted in a setting of dark blue velvet, and the milky way beat a track across...
There are times for the Vagabond, as for every man, when the apple turns to ashes on his palate, when the burden and the mystery prey on his spirit. He turns from the shallow comfort of the penny-a-liners to the mordant voice of Housman. Like Archduke's cousin, he sees the symbol of it all in a handfull of dust. Like Swift, he celebrates his birthday as a time of mourning, and all neighbors join in. Life is a poor thing, bitter and mocking and the phrase of Solon runs in his mind...
...walled garden where the lilacs, now past their fullest bloom, but lovely still, run in purple and mauve along the quiet walks. A rampart of hills slope toward the sunset, and their sides are covered with the flower called the torch azalea, whose scentless beauty can teach the Vagabond more than all the sages can. Further on there is a valley where the sentinel pines stand black against a setting of green leaved oaks and hemlocks. There is also a brook, and horsemen clatter over the wooden bridge that bestrides it. A group of boys are sailing boats...