GEORGE WASHINGTON CRAM

The death of George Washington Cram on New Year's Eve closed a career which will be remembered as one of Harvard's longest and most useful. Forty-two years of Mr. Cram's life were devoted to the University, as Recorder, as Secretary of the Faculty, and as Secretary of Appointments.

It was in this last that Harvard men knew him best. Many a prospective young teacher visited Mr. Cram, diffident but hopeful, and watched that careful consignment of his blank to the files of the Secretary of Appointments. The weeks passed, and the hope waned, but always there came the little note, the position which had been snatched out of the air, it seemed, by Mr. Cram's quiet diligence and energy. On these occasions the student found it difficult to believe that George Washington Cram could ever slam a telephone receiver, that he was, of all University Hall officials, the most exacting and punctilious. Mr. Cram became, in the last years, a tradition. But he was never thought of, even in those years, as detached or venerable, in the manner of traditions. To the final day he was a living force, and it never occurred to anyone to think of University Hall, or of Harvard, without him.