Word: vagabonder
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There was a tall, thin cynic in the early thirties there also, with his little blonde mustache twisted into a habitual sneer. A junior high school general science teacher, no doubt. The Vagabond mused sympathetically upon this probably frustrated soul and his inner struggles. He had never wanted to teach general science to squeamish thirteen-year-old girls and still-juvenile boys. Vag was sure of that; nobody could possibly want such a job. But when it fell in his path, there hadn't been much for an indifferent, unemployed, distinctly mediocre college graduate to do but accept...
...look of horrified amazement wringing his face. He lunged for the paper, oblivious of the soup in his path and the wrath of its owner who could imagine even more pleasant things that delicious minestrone in his lap. But the gushing curses faded into an incredulous stare. The Vagabond was breathing heavily--"inhale, exhale." "It's unfair," he murmured, the paper already a twisted shred. "It's inhuman," he howled, glaring with bloodshot eyes at his awestruck companion...
...Author Paul's lost hedonistic heaven. Its hotels, bars, bordello and habitues exhale for him the garlicky breath of the real France−"the France one prefers to remember." Mostly they stagger between the tough tenderness of a Daumier cartoon and William Locke's The Beloved Vagabond. They also suggest a reason for France's fall...
Suddenly the Vagabond jumped up. "This is what they mean by softness," he shouted at the top of his lungs; and the inmates looked up in alarm, each one putting his finger on the page of his book so as not to lose his place. "This," shrieked Vag, almost forgetting his hangover as he dashed his pipe to the floor. "Away, you manifestation of an era of physical and intellectual decadence," he shouted as he stamped on the offending briar. "That's what I am. I'm soft, flabby, weak. Remember Pearl Harbor...
...inmates gazed at one another in mute astonishment, the Vagabond rushed from the room. "Bring on that barbed wire, where are those shovels? Muscles! Biceps! Feet! Ears! Good-bye Momma, I'm off to . . ." and his voice died away in the distance...