The Vagabond

In the bedroom at the southeast end of our study I had the sun in the morning. Now I have the one at the southwest end and I get the sun in the afternoon.

I changed last year when I fell heir to a chair and two lamps from a friend who moved Out West at midyears. My room was too small for them so my room-mate very agreeably shifted with me. This room looks over the Court and at night if my little black alarm clock is stopped I can look at the big illuminated dial in the Coolidge, Shepley, Bullfinch and Abbot pediment opposite. Thus I know when it is twelve o'clock and high time to stop studying. Or if I am not studying I know when it is high time to stop something else.

There is not so much noise from the Court as there used to be from the sidewalk on the other side when the boys would come rolling home late from whatever it was they had found to come rolling home late from. There used to be uncouth songs and shouts from them sometimes and I would wake up and mutter to myself. Now the only noise that bothers me is the sparrows under the caves and in the ivy near my window. The sparrows start their lively twittering with the first rays of the (to me) invisible sun. It is usually more unpleasant than pleasant to wake up early and listen to them. I get to thinking I shouldn't have gone to bed so late--if I hadn't I could get up now, and to my duties haste. Or how I wasted all day before--except for the half hour of squash--that was certainly to the good. Or other things.

The fellow through the fire-door in the next entry sings in the morning. He has a good voice--a voice that makes me want to sing with him. I really don't mind him. It is the sun in the morning, I think, that makes me want the old room back. But the chair and the lamps would never do in there and besides there is a great space-devouring bureau, with a mirror, which I have acquired since. I will have to stay in here and get the sun in the afternoon.