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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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Dwight Hall had its origins as the Yale Christian society, when a group of students petitioned the Reverend Noah Porter, President of the University, for the right to worship on their own instead of attending compulsory chapel. The students began a huge Sunday school movement, riding horse-drawn carriages to area churches each week, where they would conduct classes or direct church choirs.
Many faculty members, when innocently asked "where are you going for your vacation?" are apt to snarl back "what vacation?" The University has adopted a sort of shift system by which every faculty member is to get one of every three summers off. One professor predicted the other day that after the war the faculty might refuse to teach: "I'm going to lie on my back for ten years and live on breadfruit and pickles. The hell with European history; I want peace and quiet." The release he got from saying these heretical things was enough to carry him on for a week.
As you probably know, the Yale and Harvard Clubs of Paris traditionally meet at separate dinners in the same or adjoining restaurants the Saturday night of the Yale-Harvard game, the further tradition being that when the results of the game are known, the loser buys champagne for the winner. Saturday morning, the day after the assassination [of John F. Kennedy], when those in charge called the restaurant to say that the dinners would have to be canceled for that night, they were told at once that the dinners would be canceled without any charge whatsoever. So many of our compatriots tend to look upon the French as taking all fair and unfair advantage of Americans in France that I am glad to report this most friendly story.
Iwas six years old when I overheard my older sister Marie discussing what to give a certain boy for his birthday. My sister suggested a book. Her friend exclaimed: "But he has a book already!" At that time, I owned six or seven books, and I thought how miserable that boy must be to have only one, and how strange of my sister's friend to think that only one book was enough. Now I probably have 6,000 books in my private library, and I am considerably less happy than when I owned just six or seven. |
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