Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/130

 “serving-room” is a very modern improvement in the art of dining. The screen in fact persisted up to the time Memorial Hall was built, though in that case it projected from the side wall, as a more central location.

In the dining-hall each table held two “messes” (appropriate term!) of eight or ten men apiece. The students sat by classes, and at first in their order of social precedence as established by the catalogue, the most aristocratic receiving the earliest attention and the best portions of the dish. Afterwards, groups of congenial cronies were allowed to mess together, an arrangement more conducive to good feeling, but also more favorable to the hatching of plots and disorders. The tutors, or “fellows,” and graduate students sat at a raised table, supervised the decorum of the meal, and took turns in asking the blessing and returning thanks. (The President dined in his own house.) At the high table also sat such few undergraduates as felt sufficiently assured of