A HOUSE IS A HOME

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I see by my handy CRIMSON that the Establishment, since my remorseless withdrawal from the celestial confines, continues with undiminished zeal in its search for the truth that we all seek. I can only express (from my dark corner) my gratitude for its paternal indulgence of its wayward sons. I refer, of course, to a recent CRIMSON story reporting what our Housemasters think of those sorry seniors who shut out from their lives the golden world of the Houses and who slunk into the drafty and frosty holes that are the private dwellings of Cambridge.

Master Perkins, whose service to mankind in the pronouncement of truths has been awesome indeed, has perhaps even exceeded himself with the assertion that these low fellows are engaged in a plot that "strikes at the roots of the House system." And Master Finley, whose record in the field of verities also cannot be underestimated, has observed with his usual good humor that "one student told me he had a little more privacy but a lot less hot water."

How often man does what he knows not! Certainly, I do miss the hot water; but, Mr. Finley, far more important, so very far more important, has been the vacancy I feel in the depths of my being, the loneliness, indeed the despair I sense at the loss of hearty House fellowship that lies in the soul of Harvard College, founded in 1636.

The memory of this fellowship I carry emblazoned on my fading consciousness. It is the memory of staggering upstairs from the dining hall to my moist and tropical room, my belly swelled with an evening feast of boiled potato, wads of creamy butter, rice pudding, French bread, crispy pie crust and glass upon glass of tepid milk. (It is of such starch that tomorrow's leaders are made.) It is the memory of a genial House superintendent humbly whistling an Irish air as he searched musty closets for machine-guns, hashish, Radcliffe girls and other contraband. It is the memory of leather magazine covers, tattered around the edges by the leisurely passing of time in the House common room. It is the memory of the indecisive rap on the oaken door and the diffident request to please modulate the sound on the record player. But perhaps paramount in my catalogue of memories is the greatest of these familiar symbols of fellowship--fellowship itself.

I shall never forget that late afternoon as the dying November sun sunk over the gabled rooftops and two young men, inconspicuously alike, came to call on me. Their names were Jonathan Fairfax III '59 of Boston and the Fly Club and Simon Cohen '59 of Scarsdale, New York, and the Minority Rights Club. Casting aside their fraternal affiliations and in the democratic spirit that made Al Smith an American reality, the two gentlemen said that were soliciting for contributions to the Harry T. Levin Ping-Pong Ball endowment, which, as is well known by now, ensures that no Harvardman need ever go without. How can I attempt to explain the fullness of heart I felt, the soaring elation, indeed the titillation? In the pleasure of pledging my dollars, I smiled all over that day.

But today I am not smiling. Shivering in my cubicle of misery, hungering for the opulence of the life I once knew, I can only hope that younger, better men in coming generations will not fall as I did. But I am confident that such an unfortunate event will not happen, for the fine and critical eyes of our Housemasters are looking over the future of the young and unborn. It is in praise of our House-masters that I felt compelled to communicate my thought. Gavin Scott,   117 Kinnaird Street.