bling paper to do with a pair of leather
suspenders? Nothing. Nothing much. Only, after a while, just before
the dawn, I came in front of the windows of a cheap haberdasher. And I
recalled how I had once bought at this very shop a pair of leather
suspenders. They were the only ones left--it was hinted that Seniors
bought them largely--and they were a bargain. The proprietor blew off
the dust and slapped them and dwelt upon their merits. They would last
me into middle age and were cheap. There was, I recall, a kind of
tricky differential between the shoulders to take up the slack on
either side. Being a Freshman I was prevailed upon, and I bought them
and walked to Morris Cove while they creaked and fretted. And here was
the very shop, arising in front of me as from times before the flood.
With it there arose, too, a recollection of my greenness and timidity.
And mingled with all the hours of happiness of those times there were
hours, also, of emptiness and loneliness--hours when, newcome to my
surroundings, for fear of rebuff I walked alone.

The night still lingers. These dark lines of wall and tree and tower
are etched by Time with memories to burn the pattern. The darkness
stirs strangely, like waters in the solemn bowl when a witch reads off
the future. But the past is in this darkness, and the December wind
this night has roused up the summer winds of long ago. In that cleft
is the old window. Here are the stairs, wood and echoing with an
almost forgotten tread. A word, a phrase, a face, shows for an instant
in the shadows. Here, too, in memory, is a pageantry of old custom
with its songs and uproar, victory with its fires and dance.

Forms, too, I see bent upon their books, eager or dull, with intent or
sleepy finger on the page. And I hear friendly cries and the sound of
many feet across the night.

Dawn at last--a faint light through the elms. From the Chapel tower
the bells sound the hour and strike their familiar melody. Dawn. And
now the East in triumphal garment scatters my memories, born of night,
before its flying wheel.

[Illustration]

Boots for Runaways.

Not long ago, having come through upon the uppers of my shoes, I
wrapped the pair in a bit of newspaper and went around the corner into
Sixth Avenue to find a cobbler. This is not difficult, for there are
at least three cobblers to the block, all of them in basements four or
five steps below the sidewalk. Cobblers and little tailors who