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 their wealth and family importance to claim the privileges of the English nobility and receive the title of “fellow commoners”—in return for which they paid double for their tuition. We get an idea of the arrangements from the account of the State dinner for Governor Shirley in 1741: on that occasion there were two tables at each end of the hall, while the table of honor was “across by the chimneys”; but two more tables had to be brought in, as the crowd of diners rose to the unprecedented total of one hundred and twenty!

The dining-room in the second Harvard Hall (completed in 1766) was considerably larger than its predecessor, taking up the entire eastern half of the ground floor, and measuring about 40 by 50 feet. In the last years of its occupancy, its uninviting aspect is described by a vivacious undergrad, who includes an unexpected detail not elsewhere recorded. He mentions “the chilling dampness that reigns through the room; its lofty ceilings; its venerable appearance of antiquity; its two niches now empty, where the pictures of their majesties the king and queen of England formerly were placed—sad emblems of revolution!”

The waiters were all undergraduates, again after the antique model of “sizars” at Cambridge or “servitors” at Oxford. In the new democracy however no loss of