It was very well to cultivate the muses on a little oatmeal, when resources were so scanty that a bequest of seven hundred and seventy-nine pounds seventeen shillings and two pence was a gift munificent enough to confer upon the donor the honor of giving his name to the College so endowed; when a tax of one peck of corn, or twelve pence a year, from each family was all could reasonably be levied for the maintenance of poor scholars at the College; when the Pilgrims--hardly escaped from persecution, and plunged into the midst of perils by Indian warfare, perils by frost and famine and disease, but filled with the love of liberty, and fired with the conviction that only fortified by learning could be a blessing--gave of their scanty stock and their warm hearts, one man his sheep, another his nine shillings' worth of cotton cloth, a third his pewter flagon, and so on down to the fruit-dish, the sugar-spoon, the silver-tipt jug, and the trencher-salt; but a generation that is not astonished when a man pays six thousand dollars for a few feet land to bury himself in, is without excuse in not providing for its sons a dignified and respectable home during the four years of their college life,--years generally when they are most susceptible of impressions, most impatient of restraints, most removed from society, and most need to be surrounded by every inducement to a courteous and Christian life. What was a large winded liberality then may be but niggardliness or narrowness now. If indeed there be a principle in the case, the principle that this arrangement is better adapted to a generous growth than a more ornate one, then let it be carried out. Let all public edifices and private houses be reduced to a scale of Spartan simplicity; let camel's-hair and leathern girdles take the place of broadcloth, and meat be locusts and wild honey. But so long as treasures of art and treasures of wealth are lavished on churches, and courthouses, and capitols, and private dwellings, so long as earth and sea are forced to give up the riches which are in them for the adornment of the person and the enjoyment of the palate, we cannot consistently bring forward either principles or practice to defend our neglect withal. If the experiment of a rough and primitive life is to be tried, let it be tried at home, where community of interests, and diversity of tastes, and the refinements of family and social life, will prevent it from degenerating into a fatal failure; but do not let a horde of boys colonize in a base and shabby dwelling, unless you are willing to admit the corollary that they may to that extent become base and shabby. If they do become so they are scarcely blameworthy; if they do not, it is no thanks to the system, but because other causes come in to deflect its conclusions. But why set down a weight at one end of the lever because there is a power at the other? Why not wait until, in the natural course of things, lever comes to an obstacle, and then let power bear down with all its might to remove it?
Doubtless those who look back upon their college days through the luminous mist of years, see no gray walls or rough floors, and count it only less than sacrilege to find spot or wrinkle or any such thing on the garments of their alma mater. But awful is the gift of the gods that we can become used to things; awful, since, by becoming used to them, we become insensible to their faults and tolerant of their defects.
Harvard is beloved of her sons: would she be any less beloved if she were also beautiful to outside barbarians? Would her fame be less fair, or her name less dear, if those who come up to her solemn feasts, filled the idea of her greatness, could not only tell her towers, but consider her palaces, without being forced to bury their admiration and reverence under the first threshold which they cross? O, be sure the true princess is not yet found, for king's daughter is all glorious within.
Deficiency takes shelter under antiquity and associations: associations may, indeed, festoon unlovely places, but would they cluster any less richly around walls that were stately and adequate? Is it not fitter that associations should adorn, than that they should conceal? If here and there a relic of the olden time is cherished because it is olden,--a house, a book, a dress,--shall we then live only in the houses, read only the books, and wear the dresses of our ancestors? If here and there some ship has breasted the billows of time, and sails the seas today because of its own inherent grace and strength, shall we, therefore, cling to crazy old crafts that can with difficulty be towed out of harbor, and must be kept afloat by constant application of tar and oakum? As I read the Bible and the world, gray hairs are a crown unto a man only when they are found in the way of righteousness. Laden with guilt and heavy woes, behold the AGED SINNER goes. A seemly old age is fair and beautiful, and to be had in honor by all people; but an old age squalid and pinched is of all things most pitiful.
