In Memorial

Few undergraduates below the age of reason recall the glorious four-sided clock of golden arms that once perched atop Memorial Hall. Destroyed in a fire over two years ago, only a faint echo of its booming voice is heard to remind Harvard of a time when men of high degree and low measured their affairs by its authority.

Sure and it didn't give the temperature, or market reports, or the scratches at Suffolk Downs--just the time, or an idea of time, for the four faces never reached agreement on the hour until they knew their time was up.

From Building and Grounds grasscutters to professors, everybody consulted the Mem Hall clock tower, and it was a matter of principle that its time was Harvard's time; examinations, faculty meetings, classes and parietal rules ran their course by its decree.

But that was in the more orderly past, when undergraduates, rushing without direction in their uncertain world, at least had The Time to remind them to hurry up, or slow down, or go back to bed, for it was too late anyway.

The nouveau clocks cluttering the Square are frail and glittering pretenders to the throne. Their blinking and bonging and groaning of the hour mark the passage of those who remember what it meant to race south down Divinity Avenue, glance up, and be reassured that it wasn't too late to get lunch. And for the few who remember, their time too is running out.