"HAIL, DIVINEST MELANCHOLY!"

Dame Rumor has been busy of late assigning Memorial Hall to new uses, but she is such a gossip no one heeds her tales. All they serve to do is to point the question: "What is finally to become of Mem?" Those who hold her destiny in their keeping are still silent. Certain considerations, however, ought to influence the final disposition of the old hall.

In the first place, it was built as a memorial. Now, a memorial is always a monument to the past, not the future a sort of graveyard for old memories. Surely, then, it is nothing short of profanation to think of ousting these memories from the mouldy shroud in which they have now slept for half a century. The dust of years lies thick upon the carved rafters. Since the closing of the hall, perhaps bats already flit about in the colored gloom that sifts through the stained glass windows at midday. Through the deep silence a solitary watchman sees the spider drop from the lofty roof and weave an endless web from darkness into darkness. Memory fills the hall in brooding melancholy, and protests against almost every possible new occupant of her sanctuary.

It would be better to plant green ivy about her walls, so that some future poet, wandering alone in nightly musing, may reflect upon her crumbling majesty and write as wrote his master.

from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as wandering near her secret bower.

Molest her ancient solitary reign."

There is in Memorial Hall the making of a perfect ruin.

And what more fitting than green crumbling walls to house the echoes of Harvard's past? In all the University there is no single building devoted to that past, so noble, so venerable, and so steadying in its influence upon the present and the future. Yet, as the oldest college in the new world, relies of that past abound in scattered places, if one only find the diligence to hunt them down. As time goes on, these mute witnesses of Harvard's history will grow more valuable. Why not make of Memorial Hall a museum devoted solely to Harvard's history." The idea merits consideration.

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as wandering near her secret bower.

Molest her ancient solitary reign."

There is in Memorial Hall the making of a perfect ruin.

And what more fitting than green crumbling walls to house the echoes of Harvard's past? In all the University there is no single building devoted to that past, so noble, so venerable, and so steadying in its influence upon the present and the future. Yet, as the oldest college in the new world, relies of that past abound in scattered places, if one only find the diligence to hunt them down. As time goes on, these mute witnesses of Harvard's history will grow more valuable. Why not make of Memorial Hall a museum devoted solely to Harvard's history." The idea merits consideration.