[PADG:451] FW: [EXLIBRIS:30009] Fwd: A Harvard man uses the library, ca. 1840

["Paulson, Barbara" <BPaulson@xxxxxxx>]

I'm surprised that no one has yet posted this to Padg. It's certainly
appropriate to Friday afternoon.

Barbara

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Subject: [EXLIBRIS:30009] Fwd: A Harvard man uses the library, ca. 1840

--- david warrington <warringt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Date:         Wed, 4 May 2005 10:44:44 -0400
> From:         david warrington
> <warringt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: A Harvard man uses the library, ca. 1840
> To:           SHARP-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
Gleaned from George Frisbie Hoar's AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SEVENTY YEARS.
(NY:
Charles Scribners, 1903, 2 vols); Hoar received his A.B. from Harvard 
in 1846:

> "An anecdote came down from a class before my time which I think ought

> not to be lost.  One of the boys when the cold weather came on in the 
> first term of his freshman year took out from the college library a 
> book which was nearly the largest and thickest volume it contained.  
> It was the works of Bishop Williams, who I think was one of the seven 
> bishops persecuted by James II.  The book contained an exceedingly 
> dull treatise on theology.  The youth had no special literary tastes, 
> of which anybody knew, and that was the only book he was ever known to

> take out.  He kept it out the six weeks which were allowed, and then 
> renewed it, not taking it back to the library until the hot weather of

> the following summer.  He repeated this in his sophomore and junior 
> and senior years.

> Dr. [Thaddeus William]
> Harris, the librarian, was very much puzzled and asked some of the 
> boys if they could tell him why this young man kept Bishop Williams's 
> works so constantly.  None of the boys knew.  They used to see it 
> lying on his table, but never saw any signs of his reading it.
> At last one winter night
> late in the senior year something happened which caused a good deal of

> excitement.  Several of the boys who were down in the yard rushed up 
> in great haste to this classmate's room.  It happened to be unlocked.

> They got in without knocking and found him undressed with nothing on 
> but his nightgown.  His bed happened to be near the fire, and standing

> up on the edge in front of the fire was Bishop Williams's works.  It 
> turned out that he was in the habit of thoroughly warming the book and

> then of putting it in the bed before he got in himself, so that it 
> would serve the function of a warming-pan.  The young gentleman turned

> out in after life to be a very distinguished Bishop himself, an 
> eminent champion of the doctrines of the Episcopal Church, which he 
> had doubtless acquired by absorption." (i, 125-126)
> 
> It would be wonderful to find the volume today and to see if it 
> contained evidence of its unusual use, but, alas, I find no 
> appropriate record in Harvard's on-line catalogue, HOLLIS.

 
> David Warrington
> Librarian for Special Collections
> Harvard Law School Library
> Cambridge, MA 02138
> 
> telephone: (617) 496-2115
> email: warringt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx