ver, in the
flesh, despite the lapse of time--for it went off long ago when the
mastodon still wandered on the pleasant upland--its continued absence
vexes the learned. They scan ancient texts for an improper syllable
and mark the time upon their brown old fingers, if possibly a jolting
measure may offer them a clue. Although it must appear that the
digamma--if it yet rambles alive somewhere beneath the moon--has by
this time grown a beard and is lost beyond recognition, still old
gentlemen meet weekly and read papers to one another on the progress
of the search. Like the old woman of the story they still keep a light
burning in their study windows against the wanderer's return.

Now it happened once that a group of undergraduates, stirred to
sympathy beyond the common usage of the classroom, formed themselves
into a club to aid in the search. It is not recorded that they were
the deepest students in the class, yet mark their zeal! On a rumor
arising from the chairman that the presence of the lost digamma was
suspected the group rushed together of an evening, for there was an
instinct that the digamma, like the raccoon, was easiest trapped at
night. To stay their stomachs against a protracted search, for their
colloquies sat late, they ordered a plentiful dinner to be placed
before them. Also, on the happy chance that success might crown the
night, a row of stout Tobies was set upon the board. If the prodigal
lurked without and his vagrant nose were seen at last upon the window,
then musty liquor, from a Toby's three-cornered hat, would be a
fitting pledge for his return.

I do not know to a certainty the place of these meetings, but I choose
to fancy that it was an upper room in a modest restaurant that went by
the name of Mory's--not the modern Mory's that affects the manners of
a club, but the original Temple Bar, remembered justly for its brown
ale and golden bucks.

There was, of course, a choice of places where the Lost Digamma might
have pushed its search. Waiving Billy's and the meaner joints
conferred on freshmen, there was, to be sure, the scholastic murk of
Traeger's--one room especially at the rear with steins around the
walls. There was Heublein's, also. Even the Tontine might rouse a
student. But I choose to consider that Mory's was the place.

Never elsewhere has cheese sputtered on toast with such hot delight.
Never have such fair round eggs perched upon the top. The hen who laid
the golden egg--for