The Student Vagabond

The Vagabond has fled the halls of Harvard and betaken himself to a fairer place than even Cambridge town, which is not difficult if he remembers his Cambridge. Inasmuch as he plans to sojourn here for some weeks far from the madding crowd it will be best to describe this place for his readers. There are no Georgian Houses with gold leaf and emblazoned shields, there are no Georgian cafeterias, there are no Deans, and there is no scaffolding to hide the works of God.

The evening sun has just rolled down a shoulder of the mountain leaving a great blue heron hanging alone in the sky. He surveys with evident satisfaction the long line of foothills that stretch away like ramparts across the horizon. A carpet of soft green swings down the valley and lies along the plains beyond. In the pasture across the road a solitary hedgehog is pottering about some forgotten business before he sets out on the long waddle home. And in the air there is that strange silence that brings only happy sounds; the voice of the brook or the off-key whistle of a farm boy. It is that indefinable time of day or night which poets and song writers have tried to limit by a phrase without success. They call it gloaming, or twilight, or dusk and straightway destroy the illusion. It is none of these, but only ten minutes past sunset in New Hampshire and it must be heard and seen and felt, not rhymed and written.

And what does the Vagabond do, you will ask? There are any number of things he can do. He can spade in the garden, or ride a horse, or go swimming, or talk to urchins, but he mostly sits, or "goes singin' like the mornin' stars for joy that he was made." And there is, too, in New Hampshire a wine of the country that used to be made from Russets, but now is ground from Baldwins. Boys at college distil it and call it applejack, but the farmers of New Hampshire keep it in a 50-gallon keg and call it cider. It does not burn like Rhum, it does not bite like Gin, it does not scrape like Scotch. It softens the rough edges, it burnishes the afterglow, and it catches a wind tossed echo of the music of the spheres. And above all it flows from a pitcher the mate to which Hawthorne has called miraculous.

This is the Vagabond's present existence, but he must stop writing about it now. The hour grows late and he must eat as other men do. Besides, as the sun plunges into the west, so, at the same time, the moon surges up in the east, and he must go and do as other men do.