The floor, or pit, of the house was filled with the commencing
bachelors; the gallery was crowded with spectators, chiefly ladies.
After the ceremony we were invited to assist at the dinner given by
the students to the president, and a company among whom it was a
distinction for a stranger to sit. The ceremony of conferring degrees
was interesting to an Englishman and a member of the older Cambridge,
because it contained certain points of detail which had certainly been
brought over by Harvard himself, the founder, from the old to the new
Cambridge. The dinner, or luncheon, was interesting for the speeches,
for which it was the occasion and the excuse. The president, for his
part, reported the addition of $750,000 to the wealth of the college,
and called attention to the very remarkable feature of modern American
liberality in the lavish gifts and endowments going on all over the
States to colleges and places of learning. He said that it was
unprecedented in history. With submissions to the learned president,
not quite without precedent. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
witnessed a similar spirit in the foundation and endowment of colleges
and schools in England and Scotland. About half the colleges of Oxford
and Cambridge, and three out of the four Scottish universities, belong
to the period.
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