"CLUB TABLES"

An innovation in the Union next year which will be awaited with interest is the addition to its regular dining facilities of the old-fashioned type of "club table." This will mark the revival of a custom previously prevalent at Harvard, now many years suspended, which older graduates review with genuine pleasure and appreciation.

In former days, instead of "signing up" for meals, a group of eight or ten men created a so-called "club table" in their Freshman year, and in most cases the members continued to eat together during the succeeding terms, regardless of the event that they might belong to different clubs or societies. These "club tables" were in no sense regular associations, but merely informal gatherings for the purpose of eating and talking. The men who made up a "club table" grew to look forward to three meals a day with one another, and in particular, to the general discussion which followed. Thus the most intimate friendships were contracted, lasting long into later life.

Not only ought such an institution to benefit those who consistently eat at the Union, but it should prove of advantage to students who are in the habit of dining at their individual clubs. While it is unlikely that the latter class of men would take all their meals at a "club table" in the Union, they might find that attendance at such a group, say three or more times a week, bad much to offer. Thus many friends whose social activities are confined to widely-separated clubs, but who are yet more than ordinarily congenial, would be brought together, at stated times; a wider and more intimate acquaintance among one's classmates would certainly result. If the old practice, with this adaptation to present conditions, can be restored so that undergraduates get as much out of it as alumni claim they, did. It should prove a decidedly worth-while experiment.