Those Thanksgivings will never return. The caps are torn now, and the heads that wore them would fit them no more. We could not meet to be happy again, if we tried, because of the vacant places. The rogue who was made parson would not be present either,--which of us, outside Paradise, is quite the same after so many years?--having vanished just as surely as the old friends, and the dear kindred, who have died. For, in your own phrase, little folk, that was _me_. At least, I like to think it was. Perhaps this is all a make-believe story; but if you doubt it, go and ask somebody else who was there.
CERTAIN words sound like caresses. "Thou vagabond!" must have been at some time or other a gentler appellation than our rude transition would make it. Why not? "Rogue" and "truant" have yet their playful uses. Though we translate illy such endearments of antiquity, we may read in Gascoigne:--
"O Abraham's _brats_! O brood of blessèd seed!"
The "goodly and virtuous young imps" of old citation, we should also construe but saucily. Besides, "vagabond" lendeth itself gracefully to the affectionate diminutives of alien tongues, which, to a philologist, may be as good as an argument: what can be tenderer than _vagaböndchen_, _vagabondellino_, and a like musical play of syllables over the solid English rock?
The vagabond is the modern representative of the knight-errant, shorn of his romance, inasmuch as both fall neatly under the definition of a stroller, a free lance, whom the domestic Lar does not allure or attach to any one fireside. The immortal Don of la Mancha, revived in this age, should figure as a tramp in the police station, before he had adorned public life twenty-four hours. But the vagabond proper has an Asiatic cousin, who gets princelier treatment. The Rônin of chivalrous Japan is a gentleman of leisure, who, not averse to a chance of seasonable employment, roams at large, settling his private differences, and serving Heaven unmolested, according to his lights. Vagabonds are legally denominated "such as wake on the night, and sleep on the day; and haunt customable taverns and ale-houses, and rout about; and no man wots whence they come nor whither they go:" a comprehensive statement in three parts, which has, moreover, a covert whimsical reference categorically to actors, politicians, and bank-clerks. A vagabond, primarily, was merely an idle person; and if his name has come to imply variations of decorum, and a questionable standing in polite circles, it is to be accounted for only on the worn adage that Satan takes personal care of undedicated energies.