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What happens to old books around College? That was a question that was bothering the reporter. Of course he knew that some of them are turned over to the proprietors of the Massachusetts Avenue emporiums--in exchange for a very slight consideration, some times ever so slight--but where do all the old French 2 and German A masterpieces find their end?
The mystery was solved by some one suggesting the Phillips Brooks House Textbook Loan Library as a possible grave. There, sure enough, were Chemistry books that haven't been used for 33 years, Latin texts that were read at Harvard in 1844, 135 copies of a no longer used English A book, 438 old German texts, and, last but not least, 1311 copies of those small blue French books that have been the meat of French 2 for 20 years.
It seems that for a long time the Lean Library has been collecting the old books given it every spring by students whom Finals have temporarily relieved of the necessity for further study. Then these books are lent to needy students for a small fee. The trouble is that Harvard's plutocratic faculty insists on changing the course textbooks every few years, thus outdating the books.
But there is no such thing as out of date in the Loan Library. For instance there's that 1844 copy of "C. Julius Caesar's Commentaries, ed. by Prof. E. A. Andrews", last used in 1868, according to the date on the fly leaf. Or the "Elements of Algebra", published in 1894, and stamped as the property of Public School No. 23 of Dana, Massachusetts. We regret to say that the name of the person who hijacked it from Public School No. 23 is that of a well-known reporter on the Boston Herald. When we had seen all these antique wonders, the reporter began to understand why Phillips Brooks House is staging a book drive this spring.
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