Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/310

 floor were appropriated to the trio of professors; the fourth was the library office. One of the second-storey front rooms was occupied as an abode by the student to whom the duties of a librarian were entrusted. Another room was set aside for the meetings of the law-club courts, another for a general sitting-room and study, and the fourth for a reading-room. In the transverse addition at the rear were the library on the first floor and the lecture-room on the second. I believe the old mahogany desk now in the East Lecture-Room of Austin Hall was that used in the original lecture-hall.

In the library, half the space was taken up with bookshelves, the rest with tables and settees. In various corners and alcoves were some half-dozen high desks with stools, which were rented by the janitor at five dollars a term to the few men who knew enough and cared enough to use the library in a continuous and systematic way. Outside this handful of enthusiasts there was but little work done in the library. The textbooks were read by each man in his own rooms, and there was not much examination of the treatises or reports. Besides, there was difficulty in finding anything on the shelves. If you wanted a book, you hunted for it yourself till you found it or got tired.

But the greatest obstacle to work in the library was