Hoary Traditions March On; Yardlings Awed by Widener

Two Freshmen wandered into Widener Reading Room the other day with that wistful, fervent look about them. They looked properly impressed as they surveyed a roomful of early birds grinding away on their first-week assignments, with nothing but the sweep of fountain pens, and the whispered requests at the reference desk disturbing the sepulchral atmosphere.

They stood in silent admiration for several minutes, their eyes sweeping the large room, and then gathered for a brief, hardly audible discussion. "And just to think," one Yardling intoned to his companion, not unlike stout Balboa, upon a peak at Darien, "all those fellows are Harvard men."