KIRKLAND HOUSE

There is a mysterious quirk in a twenty year old will which prevents the name "Kirkland" from gracing the ultra-official roster of the Houses. But the legal insistence upon the names of George, James, and Persist Smith is one of the more fortunate accidents in the errant science of nomenclature. For today, the Kirkland House preserves intact the heritage of its days as a Freshman playground. From any point of view it is on the periphery of the House plan: its mundane quadrangle embraces an independence and unity which others have sought vainly to inspire; it has developed its own institutions and customs; generally speaking, it ignores, and is ignored by, the rest of the system.

Much of this spirit is due, certainly, to the factors which made the Smith Halls a notable spiritual unit among Freshmen, that is, to the compactness of the quadrangle, to the small number of inhabitants, and to the isolated position. But perhaps more significant is the term "social desert" which has clung to this seventh unit. Kirkland, to be sure, possesses a share of social climbers and lights; but unlike any other House, it possesses a stable bulk of population, a comfortable companionable middle class, which, quite without effort, finds itself a solid unit.

Other features of the House have been catalogued in the article printed in today's CRIMSON. A few of these need special emphasis. There is the inimitable Coffee Pot and the bent for economics, there is the smell of old stew in the entry over the kitchen and the rare collection of pornographic, there is the proud colonial library and the trolley line on Boylston Street. Some of these features are new, but the middle class remains, and with it all that was implicit in the term Smith Hall.