I Travel the Open Road - Classic Writings of Journeys Taken around the World. Various
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belongs to the period subsequent to 1846, and has much to do with the growth of the eastern portions of Cambridge, where the combined facilities for railroad and water communication have been peculiarly favourable to manufactures. In the early part of this century, the glassworks at East Cambridge, which have since departed, were somewhat famous, considerable manufactures of soap and leather had been begun, and cars and wagons were made here. At the present time some of our chief manufactures are of engine boilers and various kinds of machinery, of which the annual product exceeds $2,000,000. Among the industries which produce in yearly value more than $1,000,000 may be mentioned printing and publishing, musical instruments (especially pianos and organs), furniture, clothing, carpenter's work, soap and candles, biscuit-baking; while among those that produce $500,000 or more are carriage-making and wheelwright's work, plumbing and plumber's materials, bricks and tiles, and confectionery. Not only our own new Harvard Bridge, but most of the steel railway bridges in New England, have been built in Cambridge. We supply a considerable part of the world with hydraulic engines; the United States Navy comes here for its pumps, and our pumping machines may be seen at work in Honolulu, in Sydney, in St. Petersburg. In the dimensions of its pork-packing industry, Cambridge comes next after Chicago and Kansas City. In 1842 all the fish-netting used in America was made in England; to-day it is chiefly made in East Cambridge, which also furnishes the twine prized by disciples of Izaak Walton in many parts of the world. Last year the potteries on Walden Street turned out seven million flower-pots. Such facts as these bear witness to the unusual facilities of our city, where coal can be taken and freight can be shipped at the very door of the factory, where taxes and insurance are not burdensome and the fire department is unsurpassed for efficiency, where skilled labour is easy to get because good workmen find life comfortable and attractive, with excellent sanitary conditions and unrivalled means of free education, even to the Latin School and the Manual Training School. It is well said, in one of the reports in our semi-centennial volume, that "to Cambridge herself, as much as to any other one thing, is the success of all her manufacturing enterprises due, and all agree in acknowledging it."
Among Cambridge industries, two may be mentioned as especially characteristic and famous. Of the printing establishments now existing, not many can be more venerable than our University Press, of which we have spoken as beginning in 1639. Of the wise and genial founder of the Riverside Press—who once was mayor of our city, and whose memory we love and revere—it may be said that few men of recent times have had a higher conception of bookmaking as one of the fine arts. These two institutions have set a lofty standard for the Athenæum Press, which has lately come to bear them company. The past half century has seen Cambridge come into the foremost rank among the few publishing centres of the world, where books are printed with faultless accuracy and artistic taste.
The visitor to Cambridge from Brookline, as he leaves the bridge at Brookline Street, comes upon a pleasant dwelling house, with a private observatory, and hard by it a plain brick building. That is the shop of Alvan Clark & Sons, who have carried the art of telescope-making to a height never reached before. There have been made the most powerful refracting telescopes in the world, and one of the firm, more than thirty years ago, himself acquired fame as an astronomer for his discovery of the companion of Sirius.
From this quiet nook in the Port one's thoughts naturally turn to the Harvard Observatory, which in those days the two Bonds made famous for their accurate methods of research, their discoveries relating to the planet Saturn, and their share in the application of photography to telescopic observation. The honourable position then taken by the Observatory has been since maintained; but as we note this, we find ourselves brought to the consideration of the University and its last half century of growth. And here my remarks cannot help taking the form, to some extent, of personal reminiscences.
When I first came to Old Cambridge, in 1860, it still had much of the village look, which it has since been fast losing. Pretty much all the spaces now covered by street after street of wooden "Queen Anne" houses, in such proximity as to make one instinctively look for the whereabouts of the nearest fire alarm, were then open, smiling fields. The old house where the Shepard Church stands was rural enough for the Berkshire Hills; and on the site of Austin Hall, in the doorway of a homestead built in 1710, one might pause for a cosy chat with the venerable and courtly Royal Morse, whose personal recollections went back into the eighteenth century. The trees on the common were the merest saplings, but an elm of mighty sweep, whose loss one must regret, shaded the whole of Harvard Square. Horse cars came and went on week days, but on Sunday he who would visit Boston must either walk or take an omnibus, in which riding was a penance severe enough to atone for the sin. "Blue Laws" in the University were in full force; the student who spent his Sundays at home in Boston must bring out a certificate showing that he had attended divine service twice; no discretion was allowed the parents.
College athletics were in their infancy, as the little gymnasium still standing serves to remind us. There were rowing matches, but baseball had not come upon the scene, and football had just been summarily suppressed. The first college exercise in which I took part was the burial of the football, with solemn rites, in a corner of this Delta. On Class Day there was no need for closing the yard; there was room enough for all, and groups of youths and maidens in light summer dress, dancing on the green before Holworthy, made a charming picture, like that of an ancient May Day in merry England, save for the broiling heat.
The examination days which followed were more searching than at other American colleges. The courses of study were on the whole better arranged than elsewhere, but during the first half of the course everything was prescribed, and in the last half the elective system played but a subordinate part. The system of examinations did not extend to the Law School, where a simple residence of three terms entitled a student to receive the bachelor's degree. The library at Gore Hall had less than one fifth of its present volumes, with no catalogue accessible to the public, while one small table accommodated all the readers. For laboratory work the facilities were meagre, and very little was done. We all studied a book of chemistry; how many of us ever really looked at such things as manganese or antimony? For the student of biology the provision was better, for the Botanic Garden was very helpful, and in the autumn of 1860 was opened the first section of our glorious Museum of Comparative Zoölogy.
Here one is naturally led to the reflection that in that day of small things, as some might call it, there were spiritual influences operative at Harvard which more than made up for shortcomings in material equipment. There is a kind of human presence, all too rare in this world, which is in itself a stimulus and an education worth more than all the scholastic artifices that the wit of man has devised; for in the mere contact with it one's mind is trained and widened as if by enchantment. Such a human presence in Cambridge was Louis Agassiz. Can one ever forget that beaming face as he used to come strolling across the yard, with lighted cigar, in serene obliviousness of the University statutes? Scarcely had one passed him, when one might exchange a pleasant word with Asa Gray, or descry in some arching vista the picturesque figures of Sophocles or Peirce, or, turning up Brattle Street, encounter, with a thrill of pleasure not untinged with awe, Longfellow and Lowell walking side by side. In such wise are the streets and lawns of our city hallowed by the human presences that once graced them; and few are the things to be had for which one would exchange the memories of those days!
My class of 1863, with 120 members, was the largest that had been graduated here. It would have been larger but for the Civil War, and a period followed with classes of less than 100 members,—a sad commentary upon the times. Boundless possibilities of valuable achievement must be sacrificed to secure the supreme end, that the commonwealth should not suffer harm. How nobly Harvard responded to the demand is recorded upon the solemn tablets in this Memorial Hall. For those who are inclined to dally with the thought that war is something that may be undertaken lightly and with frolicsome heart, this sacred precinct and the monument on yonder common have their lesson that may well be pondered.
The vast growth of our country since the Civil War has been attended with the creation of new universities and the enlargement of the old ones to such an extent as to show that the demand for higher education more than keeps pace with the increase of population. The last graduating class in our Quinquennial Catalogue numbered 350 members. The University contains more than 3000 students. The increase in number of instructors, in courses of instruction, in laboratories and museums, in facilities and appliances