Part 1

It would be easy to overemphasize Jeff's intellectual difficulties
at the expense of the deep delight he found in many phases of his
student life. The daily routine of the library, the tennis courts,
and the jolly table talk brought out the boy in him that had been
submerged.

There developed in him a vagabond streak that took him into the
woods and the hills for days at a time. About the middle of his
Sophomore year he discovered Whitman. While camping alone at night
under the stars he used to shout out,

"Strong and content, I travel the open road," or

"Allons! The road is before us!

"It is safe--I have tried it--my own feet have tried it well."

Through Stevenson's essay on Whitman Jeff came to know the Scotch
writer, and from the first paragraph of him was a sealed follower
of R. L. S. In different ways both of these poets ministered to a
certain love of freedom, of beauty, of outdoor spaces that was
ineradicably a part of his nature. The essence of vagabondage is
the spirit of romance. One may tour every corner of the earth and
still be a respectable Pharisee. One may never move a dozen miles
from the village of his birth and yet be of the happy company of
romantics. Jeff could find in a sunset, in a stretch of windswept
plain,
in the sight of water through leafless trees, something that