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 and Leyden, where the Calvinists had found sanctuary, and whence they had set forth on their great adventure. On Sundays the whole personnel adjourned to the First Parish meeting-house hard by, where—with an hour or two of “nooning”—the luckless boy-collegians yawned and shivered all day in the front gallery.

This use of the meeting-house illustrates another trait of the early administrators of the University—their canny New England economy. The ancient fane, rebuilt at intervals of sixty years or so, became by long custom almost a part of the College itself. Indeed the location of the dwelling of the Reverend Mr. Shepard, its first pastor (about on the corner of Harvard and Quincy Streets), is said to have determined the site of the original college building, that the students might have the benefit of close proximity to this paragon of piety. By virtue of being the largest auditorium in town, the meeting-house served for two centuries and more for the commencement exercises, and all other academic convocations, grave and gay. Its steeple was adorned with the “college clock,” which was removed to Concord with the rest of the University paraphernalia at the outbreak of the Revolution. From its pulpit, through many turnings of the hour-glass, thundered forth the most approved expositions of that orthodoxy which the College was founded to preserve in its pristine purity.