The Spirit of the Wanderlust seizes all the World in the early days of Spring—the so-called hobo takes to the open road, the millionaire to his country home, each rejoices that the long imprisonment of winter is passed, for all men are akin in their love of freedom. It is a search for the ideal. With De Soto we would say, “Somewhere, if ye seek untiringly, ye shall discover and drinke of ye Fountaine of Youth and Happiness.”

“Men have said they do not understand my restless wanderings,” remarked Lakewood Tom. "Can it be they have never watched the coming of the first robin, and do not know that he ushers in the new regime of promise and prosperity?

"Other men may linger in the failing twilight of the tired day. I go to greet the rising sun. Even the very birds—little hoboes of the air, break camp cheerfully in early May. Like them I, too, take to the open road and walk by faith.

"But you, my lords, with your worldly goods, are vagabonds no less than I. Out of the inexhaustible larder of the Divine, God gives you—as it were—a crust of bread, and men call you mighty in riches. Take a vagabond’s advice, and put your mark upon the house where you found favor, lest after many years, disheartened, you pass that way again and need another ‘handout’—maybe not a crust of bread, but, a more lasting gift—an ideal perchance, that may not fail so soon. Sometimes methinks it sad, there is given to man only the thing for which he asks.

“Adieu,” said Lakewood Tom, taking up his staff, “when the snow falls next year I may visit your Monastery again with your permission, if by happy chance I am on this earth. If not, I’ll meet you some Christmas day on the planet Mars, for I never forget a friend. Good cheer! Adieu.”

“Much privation has crazed the old man,” said a comrade who, with me, watched the old vagabond walking slowly down the drive.

“I do not know,” I said.