Scribe of 1875 Brands Cambridge as Mushroom Town--Sees College Slipping Into Power of Dram-Drinking Politicians

Evidence of that discord between college students and town authorities which comes to the fore periodically in such disturbances as the University Theatre riot last Friday night is found back in the days when the town of Cambridge was first gaining recognition as a distinct entity. Fifty-two years ago a writer for the Magenta in an article termed "Gown vs. Town" comes out strongly against the contaminating influence of the town then growing up around the University.

Regretting the passing of the time when "the classic shades of Harvard held peaceful sway from their throne of elms to the hills beyond the meadows", and when "offenders against the peace feared rather a dignified reproof in the shape of a few lines of good old Anacreon, than the rubicund justice of a Portchuck leak", the writer goes on to decry the present situation.

"And now what a change!" he says. "A hungry monster has arisen, which threatens to absorb us, annex us,--call it what new-fangled name ye will! We are hampered by the Port! While we of old Cambridge have been enlightening the world, dreaming with Plato, fighting with Calvin, discussing with Darwin, a town--a modern, busy, trading, prosaic, mushroom, damnable town--has been started, is growing beneath our very nose- We believe they have a "City Hall" and a "Government,"--we are not sure that the College, whose refining, softening, broadening influence has so long been felt throughout the whole country, is not partly in the power of a collection of dram-drinking politicians!

"Cambridgeport, indeed! What would it be without Harvard? A collection of slaughter houses, a pig-killing village. Whoever heard of Cambridge but as the seat of Harvard University, from which it got its very name!"