The Student Vagabond

About the person of Thomas Carlyle there has grown up the convenient myth that for him life was an eternal stomach-ache. This theory was put forward by literary critics to explain the epithetical bombast that he was pleased to call his literary style. This pleasant theory has since been taken up as a vestment of culture by intellectually striving debutantes whose only recollection of "Past and Present" is that it might have been a Vincent Club show of ten years ago. There is something rather dashing and knowing in the statement, "Oh Carlyle-a chronic dyspeptic," particularly if said with a sweep of the salad fork.

The Vagabond has always looked upon this explanation as rather too casual and flippant. It is true that much of his manifold works seem to spring from a brain clouded by the vapors of an addled egg or weighted with the soddeness of haggis, but there are flashing moments which can only be accounted for by the finest, most digestable port. True these vibrant moments when they happen to be historical as well are seldom correct, but who really cares. It is just as pleasant to dwell upon the imagined death of Danton as it is to come to grips with the real fashion in which he fled this vale of tears. It is a particularly moving picture, that of the squat unheroic figure standing at the guillotine staring off over the sweating Paris crowd murmuring to himself-'Then I shall never see my well beloved wife again," and then remembering, "no weakness Danton, Danton no weakness."

It is true that one gets a trifle weary of continued reference to "You, Oh Bobus, with your sleek, milk fed, overgrown, fatted, unbewitching, altogether plebeian body," and the like. But underneath all this balderdash and expletive lies something fine and sterling. An unflinching faith in man, a sound penetration into the perplexities of existence, a peculiar, earnest crystal ray of hope that leaps through the chinks of his Stygian gloom.

Today at 9 Professor Rollins will talk in Emerson F upon the "Latter Day Pamphlets" of Carlyle bits of script which, quite frankly have escaped the Vagabond's attention.

TODAY

9 o'clock

"Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets," Professor Rollins, Emerson F.

10 o'clock

"James Fenimore Cooper," Professor Murdock, Sever 11.

11 o'clock

"The Standard of Living," Professor Carver, Emerson 27.

"Organto Romanesque Architecture," Professor Edgell, Fogg Large Room.

"Fish and Evarta as Secretary of State," Professor Baxter, Harvard 1.

12 o'clock

"The Poetry of Keats," Professor Lowes, Emerson D.