Harvard modern history is studied through the daily paper--unless
perchance it be in Harvard's own daily paper. The considerableness of
Harvard was attested for me by the multiplicity of its press organs. I
dare say that Harvard is the only university in the world the offices of
whose comic paper are housed in a separate and important building. If
there had been a special press-building for Harvard's press, I should
have been startled. But when I beheld the mere comic organ in a spacious
and costly detached home that some London dailies would envy, I was
struck dumb. That sole fact indicated the scale of magnificence at
Harvard, and proved that the phenomenon of gold-depreciation has
proceeded further at Harvard than at any other public institution in the
world.

The etiquette of Harvard is nicely calculated to heighten the material
splendor of the place. Thus it is etiquette for the president, during
his term of office, to make a present of a building or so to the
university. Now buildings at Harvard have adopted the excellent habit of
never costing less than about half a million dollars. It is also
etiquette that the gifts to the university from old students shall touch
a certain annual sum; they touch it. Withal, there is no architectural
ostentation at Harvard. All the buildings are artistically modest; many
are beautiful; scarcely one that clashes with the sober and subtle
attractiveness of the whole aggregation. Nowhere is the eye offended.
One looks upon the crimson façades with the same lenient love as marks
one's attitude toward those quaint and lovely English houses (so
familiar to American visitors to our isle) that are all picturesqueness
and no bath-room. That is the external effect. Assuredly entering some
of those storied doorways, one would anticipate inconveniences and what
is called "Old World charm" within.