Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/39

 use. The Honorable Andrew Oliver of the class of 1724, brother-in-law of Hutchinson and later his successor as lieutenant-governor, gave a handsome folio Bible for its pulpit. Timothy Pickering of the class of 1763 describes it in his freshman year as regularly occupied for morning and evening prayers by all the students, both “in” and “out of college.” The tedium of these occasions was frequently relieved, according to custom, by the “public admonitions” delivered to erring youth, and by the “declamations” delivered by the youth themselves—about the only training in English then on the curriculum. During this period the building was really a welcome addition to the overcrowded accommodations of the College; quarters had become so cramped that many of the students were forced to board “out” in the private houses of Cambridge; and the room (if any) in Harvard Hall formerly used as a chapel was probably subdivided into “chambers.”

With the erection of Hollis in 1764, however, the pressure was greatly relieved, and a singular disinclination to occupy Holden any longer immediately made itself manifest. Had its unfamiliar, too ecclesiastical “stalls” been filled only as a matter of necessity, and with mental reservations of protest? Or had its total lack of heating arrangements proved too much for even the hardy New England constitution? Or did the Fac-