Nieman Wife Reveals Secrets--- Decries Insidious Harvard Effects

We are the Nieman wives.

We come from the northwest, from the south, the east, and from the middle. We are all different. But in one thing we are alike: we have lost our husbands at Harvard.

We came prepared to like it here. We have learned to love it. We came prepared to find the people cold and reserved. They have been warm and friendly.

We came prepared to be busy. In that we have succeeded. We take courses. Our husband gets a yen for Faulkner; we read Faulkner. He starts Becoming a Writer. We type his manuscript. He takes up handball. We bandage his skinned knees.

We came prepared to envy our husband. We have learned to do that well. But we should have come prepared to wait. That is what we do most. Tuesdays we wait dinner till he comes home from a seminar overly full of beer and cheese. Fridays we wait past midnight for the Nieman dinner and the Hour-At-Cronin's to end. That is when we realize for certain we have lost our husband. He is no longer the uncomplicated newsman we married. He has become Lost In Thought.

A year ago he was chasing fire engines. Now he is running down abstruse facts. All of a sudden he is burning to be An Authority. In one short year he must learn all that he should have found out in the 33 that went before.

It promised to be such a normal year. No more irregular hours. No more late meals. No more sitting alone evenings. Our husband would go to school in the daytime. At night he would come home. It was as simple as that.

We were as simple as that. We reckoned without that sudden Thirst for Knowledge. Classes take care of it first. They last all morning. Lunch he eats at school. Afternoons he spends in the library. Finally, hunger drives him home at dinnertime. He is ours, then, for one short half hour. But we are so busy feeding him we forget the score of things we have been saving up all day to tell.

We remember them one by one as the evening goes by. But he is studying again. We close our lips. It is time for Groucho. But the radio and the wife are silent. He is deep in Currents of American Thought. We bear the stillness.

Finally he opens his mouth. We lean foward in anticipation.

"I think I'll go to bed," he says.

No doubt about it. We have lost our husband to our alma mater-in-law. --ALICE THUERMER