Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/308

 case there was but one counsel for each side and one judge. The cases were usually those which had been announced for approaching moot courts; so interest and attendance on the latter were always kept at a high level.

Besides these, there was a “Parliament” or debating society, which met once a week. Political feeling, especially just before the Civil War, ran very high; and the Southern students, ever craving social and civic leadership, particularly delighted in public speaking and argument. With the outbreak of hostilities this large element in the school disappeared, never to return, and the attendance fell, at its minimum in 1862, to sixty-nine students. After the war it rose again to a maximum (177) slightly above the former, augmented by a very different class—older men, dislodged from their places and vocations by the general upheaval, and turning to law as a possible means of improving their condition.

Before leaving this side of the subject, something should be said of Dane Hall itself, that legal crucible where so much bright gold was refined and uttered. It was built at the height of the classic revival, when every architectural project, from a stock exchange to a woodshed, was relentlessly cast in the mould of a Greek temple. Rather curiously, its pillared and pedimented portico and prim proportions formed the only example