The name is absent

American Colonial Colleges 253
selves. The only recorded letter of advice they had from
England counselled exactly that; and many later American
colleges have been started in just such a way. But the
Puritans wanted more. They knew from their English ex-
perience that education consisted not merely in lectures and
books, but in the common life of a society of scholars;
students living in the same building with their tutors, pray-
ing and playing, learning and fighting, eating and drinking
together.

It would have been natural, too, to economize on build-
ing; to have put up with a makeshift, or have erected one
of the barn-like structures that did for churches in early
New England. But the first Harvard building, the “Old
College,” was described by a contemporary as “very faire
and comely within and without, having in it a spacious Hall
and a large library with some Bookes in it” and “convenient”
chambers and studies. Indeed, one of the early chroniclers
recorded that it was “thought by some to be too gorgeous
for a wilderness.” One can almost hear the aboriginal
Yankee grumbling over all this luxury for “scollers” ! There
was a dining hall with high table and college silver for the
fellows (but wooden trenchers for the students) ; a vast
college kitchen; butteries whence beer was dispensed for
breakfast and afternoon “bever,” and wine for the com-
mencement feast; a library where John Harvard’s four
hundred volumes were placed and others kept coming in
(nucleus of what has become the greatest university library
in the world) ; great square chambers where three or four
students slept, with tiny box-like studies let into the corners,
so each could have a little privacy for his work. But the
authorities always contrived to have a tutor or graduate
student in every chamber, to counsel and befriend the
younger lads.

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